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: eb. 25, 1884. 

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CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 






ITS DEFENSIVE AND AGGEESSIVE 



VICTORIES. 



BY 



JOHN P. NEWMAN, D.D., LLD. 




NEW YORK: 

FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers, 

10 and 12 Dey Street. 

1884. 






jjfft 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by 

FUNK & WAGNALLS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

CHAPTER I. 
Achievements of Christianity 5 



CHAPTER II. 
Infidelity an Inglorious Failure, . . . . 17 

CHAPTER III. 
The Crimlnality of Infipelity 32 

CHAPTER IY. 
Great Christians vs. Great Infidels, .... 43 

CHAPTER Y. 
The Elevation of Woman, 60 

CHAPTER YI. 
Home Life of the Republic, 73 

CHAPTER YIL 
Impure Literature, . ,88 

CHAPTER YIII. 
Gamblers and Gambling, ....... 100 

CHAPTER IX. 
Magnanimity of Self-Denial, ..... 110 

CHAPTER X. 
Commercial Integrity, 124 



CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 



OHAPTEE I. 

ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Never before in the history of the Church have the 
assaults upon Christianity been more learned, more per- 
sistent, more malignant, than in the last decade. And 
these assaults were without apology. They had not the 
poor apology of the French atheists, whose atheism was 
a reaction from the corruption and tyranny of Roman- 
ism. They were without the excuse of the English 
deists, whose deism was the outcome of the immoralities 
of the Church and the State in the- reign of Charles II. 
Ten years ago, when Christianity was filling Christian 
lands with her divine beneficence ; when the clergy 
were pious, learned, and zealous ; when the laity were 
devout, liberal, and abundant in their charities — then, 
without a reasonable provocation, but from sheer hatred 
of the truth and malignity against Christ and His 
Church, the infidels of Europe and America combined 
to overthrow the most intelligent and benevolent relig- 
ion known to mankind. But these assaults have been 
as impotent and unsuccessful as would be an attempt to 
dam Niagara with a straw, or to check the march of a 
cyclone with a thread of gossamer. Out of the smoke 



CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

and lire of the terrible battle the Church has emerged in 
triumph, and to-day she appears fairer, stronger, and 
more determined than ever in the past. 

Let us recount her glorious victories. 

She has achieved the triumph of a brilliant and suc- 
cessful defence. Had the assault upon Fort Sumter 
continued to the present time, and had the defence been 
equal to the attack, could not the Government of the 
United States, in the face of Europe and of all the 
world, rightfully claim a substantial victory ? It has 
been even so with the Church of Jesus Christ. Her 
Fort Sumter remains untaken, and the flag of the Cross 
floats victoriously from her parapets. This bold and 
brazen attack upon Christianity has caused no apparent 
disaffection in the Church, and no perceptible secession 
from her ranks. Churches have not been sold, nor 
closed, nor abandoned ; but, instead, houses of worship 
have been erected, at the rate of nine per day, during all 
these terrible years ; and little less than 28,000 temples 
of piety have been consecrated to Christian worship in 
the United States during the last decade. This is more 
than a defence ; it is a glorious advance. 

The attendance on the preaching of the Gospel is 
larger now than ever before. A recent canvass of the 
churches in St. Louis on a bright Sabbath morning, and 
a corresponding canvass of the beer-gardens, theatres, 
and other places of amusement on that day, developed 
this astounding fact : that while only 8000 persons were 
found in all those places of amusement, not less than 
92,000 attended the house of God. This extraordinary 
and gratifying fact is certified to by one of the leading 
iournals of the Queen City of the West, whose editor 
instituted the investigation. Twice during the past sea- 
son, when it was my fortune to preach at Saratoga, that 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 7 

summer city of Fashion, on eacli occasion the place of 
worship was filled to overflowing ; and other beloved 
clergymen who officiated in that city were similarly 
favored with crowded congregations. When at the 
Katterskill, on the majestic mountains of the Hudson, 
out of three hundred guests at the hotel, two hundred 
and fifty attended morning service. At Ocean Grove, 
not less than ten thousand persons were present at divine 
service at each meeting during the series of ten days. 
The demand for new churches was never greater than at 
the present time. Of this fact our own Metropolitan 
City furnishes ample proof. The American people 
everywhere are more zealous and liberal than ever in 
rearing altars to the worship of the true and living God, 
and ail this notwithstanding the violent assaults by the 
infidel foe. 

The people of this country continue to express their 
faith in the lessons of wisdom, the examples of purity, 
and the deeds of charity, embraced in Christianity, by 
sending their children to the Sabbath-school. The 
childhood of the Republic is taught to receive the Bible 
as the Word of God. Nine millions of children, under 
the instruction of over a million of officers and teachers, 
compose the strength of the Sunday-school in America. 
Parents thus express an abiding confidence in the relig- 
ion of our Lord, and demand for their offspring a relig- 
ious education. They have been heedless of the bitter 
tirade of objection, of misrepresentation, and of abuse 
on the part of the foes of our holy religion, Surely the 
parentage of our country is on the side of Christ ; and, 
whether true or false, the Christian religion is the foun- 
dation of their faith and practice. 

Never before were Christian ministers in greater de- 
mand. There is no surplus. The common complaint is 



8 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

that ministers are scarce. The people are more than 
willing to employ men to teach them the precepts of 
Jesus. Eighty thousand Christian teachers are thus em- 
ployed by the American people ; and, if the average 
salary were five hundred dollars each, the aggregate sum 
of forty millions of dollars is strongly expressive of the 
faith and willingness of those who employ them. While 
it is true that some of them are inefficient, from lack of 
natural endowments, or acquirements, or devotion, and 
that not a few of them might be more successful in other 
employments, yet the rank and file of the ministry are 
godly, devoted, and learned men ; and all this notwith- 
standing the infidel cry that clergymen are hirelings and 
the priests of superstition and error. But the church- 
going people of this land are not thus convinced. 

More religious journals are • published and read than 
ever before, and more religious books are now sold than 
at any previous period. The publications of one relig- 
ious house, in the year 1881, aggregated in amount more 
than a million of dollars. In the last thirteen years that 
publishing establishment issued more than seven millions 
of volumes, and received over half a million of dollars 
for periodicals. The receipts of our religious publica- 
tion houses in ten years — 1870-80 — were nearly forty- 
three millions of dollars. One Sunday-school paper — 
the Teachers Journal — has an annual subscription of 
123,000 copies, and the Sunday -School Advocate can 
boast of 200,000 subscribers. The demand is for books 
■ — for religious books. A people must be judged by its 
literature, and by this judgment we are willing that the 
present status of Christianity shall be adjudged. All the 
power of science, of literature, of eloquence, of poetry, 
and of philosophy, has been brought to bear against the 
Book of books. The Bible has been the objective point 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 9 

of assault. How to destroy the faith of the people in 
that venerable volume — how to convince them that its 
histories are unreliable, that its prophets were madmen, 
that its poets were fools, that its apostles were supersti- 
tious propagandists, and that its believers were dupes — 
has been the cherished purpose and plan of infidelity. 
Has it succeeded ? What is the result ? Let us appeal 
to facts and figures. 

The annual report of the British and Foreign Bible 
Society presents, in one view, the immensity of the cir- 
culation of the Scriptures going on in all parts of the 
habitable globe. This one society has issued, during 
the past year, of Bibles, Testaments, and portions of 
each, nearly 10,000 a day, a total of 2,938,000 ; and 
from its organization, 93,053,000. Add to this the 
Hibernian Society's issues, 65,675 ; the issues of the 
National Society of Scotland, 468,775 ; and those of the 
American Bible Society, 1,524,773 ; and we have a total 
issue for the past year, by four great societies, of 4,989,- 
224 copies. To this must be added the issues of many 
smaller societies, of private enterprise, and the vast mul- 
titude of the Revised New Testaments, if we would com- 
pass the work of publishing the Scriptures as recorded 
in 1881 and 1882. This is simply prodigious, falling not 
much short of six and a half or seven million copies. 
But we do not get the full significance of this work till 
we follow the colporteurs of a great society like this into 
every nook and corner of the habitable globe — about 
three hundred scattered through Europe, and two hun- 
dred in the regions beyond. And to this still must be 
added similar agencies of many other societies. For 
example : in India the Vernacular Education Society 
has 158— eighteen more than the British and Foreign 
Bible Society. And yet again the wonder grows when 



10 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

we find that tlie Scriptures are published in two hundred 
and fifty languages or dialects, in three hundred and 
forty-five versions, more than four fifths of which have 
been prepared since the society was organized in 1804:. 
So, the assertion we sometimes hear, that the Bible is 
losing its hold upon the people, is the emanation of shal- 
low minds totally ignorant of the real facts in the case. 

Do you say that these copies of the Bible were given 
away ? It appears by the report of the American Bible 
Society that during the past year its receipts from the 
sale of Bibles and Testaments amounted to more than 
half a million of dollars. The people still buy the 
Bible ! 

We may judge of the faith and sincerity of any age 
by the amount of money annually given to the support 
of divine worship. Where people give intelligently and 
deliberately, it is fair to conclude that their heart is in 
the cause. Take a few facts : The Presbyterian Church, 
North and South, with 800,000 communicants, gave, in 
the year 1882, ten and a half millions of dollars. One 
branch of the Methodist Church — that known as the 
Methodist Episcopal — gave, in 1882, as its voluntary 
offerings for the support of religion, over seventeen mill- 
ions of dollars. And this is the amount annually given. 
The religious denominations in the United States gave, 
for home and foreign missions, in the last ten years, 
fifty-six millions of dollars ; and in the last twenty 
years, for missions — home and foreign — -and for religious 
books, one hundred and sixty-three millions of dollars. 
This is significant ; it is expressive of an abiding faith ; 
it illustrates the strength of the religious convictions of 
the people of this great country. And Christian Eng- 
land can boast a like honorable record. Sixty-three 
English benevolent societies received, last year, twelve 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 11 

millions of dollars, and disbursed the same for the pro- 
mulgation of the faith. 

Let us turn our attention for a moment to the acces- 
sions to the churches during these last ten years of mag- 
nificent defence. From the proud boasts of infidels one 
would suppose that accessions had ceased. Look at soino 
of these boasts : 

" A general collapse of religious faith is at hand." 
" The break between modern thought and intelligent 
faith has come." 

" A moral interregnum is at hand." 
" Spirituality is declining in the churches." 
" Christianity is outgrown by the population." 
Are these statements confirmed by facts ? More than 
four millions of persons have been received into the 
Church of Christ in the last decade. And look for a 
moment at the Christian population of the world. In 
1876 that population was three hundred and ninety-four 
millions. Four years thereafter it was four hundred and 
ten millions — an increase of sixteen millions. In the 
last eighty years it increased more than in the eighteen 
centuries previous to the year 1800. The increase was 
two hundred and ten millions. Since the Great Awak- 
ening, under Wesley and Whitefield and Edwards, it has 
gained two hundred and thirty millions ; and that in a 
little over a century and a half. In 1830 the popula- 
tions under Christian governments were three hundred 
and eighty millions ; now they are more than seven hun- 
dred millions — an increase of over three hundred mill- 
ions in fifty years. And this glorious showing is in the 
face of the most bitter and persistent opposition ever 
known, while the Church was compelled to act on the 
defensive. 

Can infidelity, with all its boastings, make a corre- 



12 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

sponcling showing ? How many temples lias it reared ? 
Has it dedicated one ? In all this great metropolis, of a 
million and a half of intelligent people, can it boast of a 
solitary regular convocation ? It once had a shrine here, 
but that has disappeared from the face of the commu- 
nity. It once had a temple in Boston, but it fell under 
the sheriff's hammer. How many journals does it main- 
tain ? Can it point to one influential paper ? And what 
of its literature ? Has it publishing houses of which it 
might be proud ? The books which it has printed, are 
they not a drug in the market ? And what of its annual 
gatherings ? Once a year the unbelievers assemble to 
give vent to their long pent-up grief that the world is 
still following Christ. This year they assembled at 
Rochester. Let us look into that convention. What a 
gathering ! There was the dreamer of the impossible ; 
the enthusiast, with more vim than means ; the insane — 
just a little off, you know ; the long-haired man and the 
short-haired woman — just to spite St. Paul ; there was 
the woman who wants to be a man and the man who 
wants to be a woman, and whose elegant language is, 
" Why didn't chance make ns tother than we are ?" 
there was that craven, cadaverous curiosity-monger, 
whose very face is an interrogation point, and whose 
undying question is, " What's np V J there was the man 
with two establishments in a decent community, and 
who swears at the Saviour because He said that " In the 
beginning it was not so ;" there were the free-lovers, 
who want the freedom of the brutes without their 
orderly instincts ; there were the lackadaisical sentimen- 
talists, whose only immortality is in a grandson, and 
whose only divinity is humanity ; and there was the 
would-be scientist, who proudly boasted that through 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 13 

his noble veins flows the best blood of the orang-outang 
race. Such was the convention. Some one has com- 
pared it to Noah's Ark. No, Noah would not have ad- 
mitted such a menagerie to his ark. 

Would you have another view of the brilliant and 
successful defence made by the Church during the last 
decade ? Let us review twelve significant facts. 

1. The cry of the infidels has been, " Moses must go. " 
Enthroned upon the summit of Sinai, amid supernatural 
displays of power and glory, he has swayed his sceptre 
of history and of law over the greatest and fairest nations 
of the globe. This was too much for infidel hate and 
pride. Moses must come down from his pre-eminence, 
and sit in the dust at their feet. Thev denied the cor- 
rectness of his story of Creation, of his divisions of time, 
of God's successive creative acts, and of the isolated 
creation of man. But such has been the vigorous de- 
fence of Moses on the part of the Church that infidelity 
has furnished no satisfactory substitute for the Mosaic 
account of Creation. The astronomy of Galileo has 
been substituted and accepted for that of the old Ptole- 
maic notion of the heavens. Newton's theory of light 
has given place to that taught by Fresnel and Clark. 
Substitutes are not new things in the world of science. 
That which commends itself to the higher reason and to 
the truer thought of the scientific world, notwithstanding 
the venerableness of existing theories, is accepted as the 
law of authoritative analyses. But not so in this case. 
We are as far, if not farther, from accepting the un- 
believer's scientific interpretation of Creation in opposi- 
tion to Moses, as ever in the past. 

2. And these learned unbelievers differ among them- 
selves. Evolutionists demand a period of time so vast 



14 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

as not to be warranted by the latest deductions of 
geology. Science is pitted against science, and facts are 
arrayed against facts. 

3. As many eminent scientists stand by Moses as those 
who are against him. There is contention in the coun- 
cils of the enemy ; there is confusion in their ranks. 
The battle waxes hot, and the signs of the times are that 
the Christian scientists will emerge victorious from the 

light. 

4. No university of eminent repute in Europe or 
America has changed its curriculum and excluded Moses. 
When Harvard and Yale, and Oxford and Cambridge 
change, then let the world change its opinion on this 
point. They hold to Moses. If, hero and there, a pro- 
fessor is in opposition, he is not strong enough to pro- 
duce a revolution. 

5. The great scientific conventions, and the academies 
of science, have not given their unanimous verdict 
against Moses. If they do not cling to him, at least 
they hesitate to speak against him. 

6. More books, with weightier arguments, have been 
published for Moses than against him. 

7. Not a single theological seminary, or college, or 
university, under the control of the Protestant, Greek, 
or Catholic Church, has changed ; but they all still hold 
to Moses. 

8. The Church stands firm in all her pulpits, in all her 
Sunday-schools, in all her literature, on the side of 
Moses. 

9. Ninety-nine per cent of her educated laymen con- 
tinue to accept the story of Creation as given by Moses, 
and the one hundredth is against him out of sheer 
oddity. Were the ninety-nine to change their views he 
would then change his, and swear by Moses. 



ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 15 

10. The enemy has been compelled to make conces- 
sions. "Whatever was the origin of man's body, two 
things have been conceded : that, after the production 
of that body, there was something superadded thereunto 
which we call the soul, and that all life comes from 
antecedent life. 

11. The Church comes forth from the fight with im- 
mense spoils. She is an immeasurable gainer. Geol- 
ogv, chemistrv, and biolo&w confirm Bible statements. 
And, in the accepted fact that in the ape there is some- 
thing of the man ; that in the bird there is something of 
the ape ; that in the reptile there is something of the 
bird ; that in the fish there is something of the reptile ; 
and that in the lowest organic form there is something of 
the next higher grade of organism, there is illustration 
in proof of the unity of creation — one God made them 
all. Where now are the men who said, " Moses must 
go" ? Let us thank them for the aid unwittingly ren- 
dered to our cause. 

We have also won a victory on the glorious battle-field 
of man's immortality. The unbeliever sought to cheat 
mankind out of the hope of heaven ; but men continue 
to believe in, and dream on of a blissful immortality. 
In all this great city only one man of any note refused 
Christian burial, and he 

" A poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
And then is heard no more." 

Men still wish a Christian minister to recite over their 
dead bodies those immortal lines : "I am the resurrec- 
tion and the life." Never were there so many spiritual- 
ists as now, whose supreme faith in a future and conscious 
state of existence is a sublime fact. All the arguments 



16 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

against immortality have been met, and not a few of 
tliem turned against the foe. To illustrate : If mind is 
a molecule, if a molecule is indivisible then mind is in- 
destructible. Let us thank them even for such facts. 

12. Quickened to duty by those recent attacks and by 
the necessities of the hour, the Church is now leading in 
original discoveries. In the future the Church is to be 
the scientific world, and Jesus of Nazareth will be 
crowned the greatest of scientists. Such has been the 
magnificent defence of the Church in the last decade. 



CHAPTER II. 

INFIDELITY AN INGLORIOUS FAILURE. 

Infidelity has failed to hold its own. Let us take a 
definite period. Let us take the last hundred years. 
This is fair. We can appeal to historic records. What 
is the expression of that century, as stated by friend and 
foe ? As we have said, it is the proud boast of the infi- 
delity of to-day that " Christianity is outgrown by the 
population," and that " Spirituality is declining in the 
churches." Are these statements confirmed by facts? 
No doubt some are a little off, some doubters have been 
honest, some sceptics have been made. It would be sur- 
prising were it otherwise. But does this difference of 
opinion amount to a revolution ? Has Christianity lost 
any of its vital power ? Instead, has infidelity held its 
own during the last century ? Let us appeal to facts and 
figures. 

What was the condition of Christian faith, of religious 
devotion, and of public morals in this country a century 
ago ? French atheism and English deism had flooded 
the continents with the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, 
and Paine, and in thirteen years — from 1817 to 1830 — 
six millions of volumes were sold or given away. 

A reaction had taken place against the Church, which 
had been allied with political oppression. Men had 
failed to distinguish between Christianity, which is 
divine, and the Church, which is human. On the con- 
tinent of Europe there was a universal shout for liberty. 



18 CHRISTIANITY TU1UMPHAKT. 

That European sliout fouiid an echo in America, hut it 
was a response against a perverted church rather than 
against the most benevolent religion known to mankind. 
The founders of this Republic were not against Chris- 
tianity, but against a political church. I must here 
enter my solemn protest against the violence done to 
history and to those illustrious men when it is asserted 
that all of them were unbelievers. Jefferson and Frank- 
lin are quoted as such, but the historic records prove the 
assertion false. I herewith give a copy of an autograph 
letter from Thomas Jefferson, the original of which I 
have seen. It was addressed to a lad who had been 
named after the immortal sage of Monti cello : 

Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson Grotjan. 

" Your affectionate mother requests that I would address to you 
as a namesake something which might have a favorable influence 
on the course of life you have to run. Few words are necessary, 
with good dispositions on your part. Adore God, reverence and 
cherish your parents, love your neighbor as yourself, and your 
country more than life. Be just, be true, murmur not at the ways 
of Providence ; and the life into which you have entered will be 
the passage to one of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the 
dead it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every 
action of your life will come under my regard. 

" Farewell. 

" Monticello, Jan. 10, '24." 

And here is a copy of an autograph letter from 
Andrew Jackson on the same subject : 

" Although requested by Mr. Grotjan, yet I can add nothing to 
the admirable advice given to his son by that virtuous patriot and 
enlightened statesman, Thomas Jefferson. The precious relic 
which he sent to the young child contains the purest morality and 
inculcates the noblest sentiments. I can only recommend a rigid 
adherence to them. They will carry him through life safely and 



INFIDELITY AX INGLORIOUS FAILURE. 19 

respectably ; and what is far better, they will carry him through 
death triumphantly ; and we may humbly trust they will secure 
to all who in principle and practice adopt them, that crown of 
immortality described in the Holy Scriptures. 

4 ' Andrew Jackson. 
" Philadelphia, June 9, 1833." 

Nor is it true that Benjamin Franklin can be numbered 
among the unbelievers. In the Constitutional Conven- 
tion of 1787, when differences of opinion were rife, it 
was Franklin who introduced a motion for daily prayers, 
and supported that motion by the following powerful 
remarks : 

" In the beginning of the contest with England, when we were 
sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for the 
divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard ; and they were 
graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle 
must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Provi- 
dence in our favor. To this kind Providence we owe this happy 
opportunity in peace for the means of establishing our future 
national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend, 
or do toe imagine toe no longer need His assistance f I have lived, 
sir, a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proofs 
I see of this truth : that God governs in the affairs of men. And, 
if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it 
probable that our empire can rise without His aid ? We have been 
assured, sir, in the Sacred Writings, that ' Except the Lord build 
the house, they labor in vain that build it.' I firmly believe this ; 
and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall suc- 
ceed in this political building no better than the builders of 
Babel ; we shall be divided by our little partial, local interests ; 
our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a 
reproach and a by-word down to future ages. And, what is 
worse, mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, 
despair of establishing government by human wisdom, and leave 
it to chance, war, and conquest. I therefore beg leave to movs 
that henceforth prayers, imploring the assistance of Heaven and 
its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every 



20 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

morning before we proceed to business ; and one or more of the 
clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service." 

Franklin is sometimes quoted as the patron of Paine's 
infidelity, but the following letter, which appears in 
Sparks' " Life and Works of Benjamin Franklin," vol. 
x. p. 281, shows how false is the aspersion : 

" Dear Sir : I have read your manuscript with some attention. 
By the argument it contains against a particular Providence, 
though you allow a general Providence, you strike at the founda- 
tions of all religion. For, without the belief in a Providence that 
takes cognizance of, guards and guides, and may favor particular 
persons, there is no motive to worship a Deity, to fear His dis- 
pleasure or to pray for His protection. I will not enter into any 
discussion of your principles, though you seem to desire it. At 
present I shall only give you my opinion, that though your rea- 
sonings are subtle, and may prevail with some readers, yet you 
will not succeed so as to change the general sentiments of man- 
kind on that subject, and the consequence of printing this piece 
will be a great deal of odium drawn upon yourself, mischief to 
you, and no benefit to others. He that spits against the wind, spits 
in his own face. 

" But were you to succeed, do you imagine any good would be 
done by it ? You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life 
without the assistance afforded by religon, you having a clear per- 
ception of the advantages of virtue and the disadvantages of 
vice, and possessing a strength of resolution sufficient to resist 
common temptations. But think how great a portion of man- 
kind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of 
inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need 
of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support 
their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes 
habitual, which is the great point of its security. 

" And perhaps you are indebted to her originally, that is, to 
your religious education, for the habits of virtue upon which you 
now justly value yourself. You might easily display your excel- 
lent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and there- 
by obtain a rank with our most distinguished authors. For among 



INFIDELITY AK INGLORIOUS FAILURE. 21 

us it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a youth to be 
raised into the company of men should prove his manhood by 
beating his mother. 

"I would advise you, therefore, not to attempt unchaining the 
tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person ; 
whereby you will save yourself a great deal of mortification by 
the enemies it may raise against you, and perhaps a good deal of 
regret and repentance. If men are so wicked with religion, what 
would they be without it f I intend this letter itself as a proof of 
my friendship, and thereby add no professions to it, but subscribe 
myself, Yours, 

"B. Franklin." 

Yet it is true that there were many powerful and con- 
spicuous infidels in the early days of the Republic ; and 
Thomas Paine was the head and front of this offending. 
Largely through his influence infidelity gained the mas- 
tery. Infidel clubs, called Uluminati, were organized,, 
and were the centre of infidel opinions. Dr. Dorches- 
ter, in his splendid work on " The Problem of Religions 
Progress,' 5 p. 182, quotes this description of one of 
those infidel clubs : 

u They claimed the right to indulge in lasciviousness, and to 
recreate themselves as their propensities and appetites should dic- 
tate. Those who composed this association/' says the writer, 
u were my neighbors; some of them were my schoolmates. I 
knew them well, both before and after they became members. I 
marked their conduct, and saw and knew their ends. Their num- 
ber was about twenty men and seven females. ... Of these, 
some were shot ; some hung ; some drowned ; two destroyed 
themselves by intemperance, one of whom was eaten by dogs, 
and the other by hogs ; one committed suicide ; one fell from 
his horse and was killed ; and one was struck with an axe and 
bled to death. . . . Joshua Miller was a teacher of infi- 
delity, and was shot off a stolen horse by Colonel J. Woodhull. 
N. Miller, his brother, was shot off a log while he was playing at 
cards on first-day morning, by Zebed June, in a scouting party 



22 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

for robbers. Benjamin Kelley was shot off his horse by a boy, 
the son of the murdered, for the murder of one Clarke ; he lay 
above ground until the crows picked his bones. J. Smith com- 
mitted suicide by stabbing himself while he was imprisoned for 
crime. "W. Smith was shot by B. Thorpe and others for robbery. 
S. T. betrayed his own confidential friend for five dollars ; his 
friend was hung, and himself afterward was shot by D. Lancaster ; 
said to be an accident. I heard the report of the gun and saw 
the blood. J. A. was shot by Michael Coleman, for robbing 
Abimel Young, in the very act. J. V. was shot by a company of 
militia. J. D., in one of his drunken fits, lay out, and was 
chilled to death. J. B. was hanged for stealing a horse. T. M. 
was shot by a Continental guard for not coming to when hailed 
by the guard. C. S. was hung for the murder of Major Nathaniel 
Strong. J. Smith and J. Yervellon were hung for robbing John 
Sackett. B. K. was hung for stealing clothes. One other indi- 
vidual, hung for murder. N. B. was drowned, after he and J. B. 
had been confined for stealing a large ox sent to General Wash- 
ington, as a present, by a friend. W. T. and W. H. were drowned. 
C. C. hung himself. T. F., Jr., was shot by order of a court- 
martial, for desertion. A. S. was struck with an axe and bled to 
death. F. S. fell from his horse and was killed. W. Clark 
drank himself to death ; he was eaten by the hogs before his 
bones were found, and they were known by his clothing. He 
was once a member of respectable standing in the Presbyterian 
Church. "While he remained with them, and regarded their rules 
and regulations, he was exemplary, industrious, sober, and re- 
spectable ; and not until he became an infidel did he become a 
vagabond. His bones, clothing, and jug were found in a corn- 
field belonging to John Coffee, and they were buried without a 
coffin. J. A., Sr., died in the woods, his rum-jug by his side. 
He was not found until a dog brought home one of his legs, 
which was identified by the stocking. His bones had been picked 
by animals. J. H., the last I shall mention in connection with 
that gang, died in a drunken fit. . . . 

" The conduct of the females who associated with this gang 
was such as to illustrate its practical effects upon them. I shall 
only say that not one of them could or would pretend to know 
who were the fathers of their offspring. Perhaps hell itself could 
not produce more disgusting objects than were some of them.'' 






INFIDELITY AN INGLORIOUS FAILURE. 23 

Speaking of the progress of infidelity in those days, 
Chancellor Kent — the greatest of American jurists — in 
his conversation with Governor Clinton, makes this 
record : " In my younger days there were very few pro- 
fessional men that were not infidels ; or they were so far 
inclined to infidelity that they could not be called 
believers in the truth of the Bible." 

In his " Old Churches and Families of Virginia," 
Bishop Meade remarks : " I can truly say that in every 
educated young man in Yirginia whom I met, I ex- 
pected to find a sceptic, if not an avowed unbeliever." 

Lyman Beecher, in his Autobiography, asserts : 
" The boys who dressed flax in the barn read Tom 
Paine, and believed him. " 

Dr. Timothy D wight's description of that period is 
sadly true : 

" Striplings, scarcely fledged, suddenly found that the world 
had been involved in general darkness through the long succes- 
sion of preceding ages, and that the light of wisdom had just 
begun to dawn upon the human race. All the science, all the in- 
formation, that had been acquired before the last thirty or forty 
years stood, in their view, for nothing. Experience they boldly 
proclaimed a plodding instructress, who taught in manners, mor- 
als, and government, nothing but Abcedarian lessons, fitted only 
for children. Religion they discovered, on the one hand, to be a 
vision of dotards and nurses ; and, on the other, a system of 
fraud and trick, imposed by priestcraft, for base purposes, upon 
the ignorant multitude. Revelation was found to be without 
authority or evidence, and moral obligation a cobweb, which 
might indeed entangle flies, but by which creatures of stronger 
wing nobly disdain to be confined. The world, they concluded 
to have been probably eternal, and matter the only existence. 
Man, they determined, sprang, like a mushroom, out of the earth 
by a chemical process ; and the power of thinking, choice, and 
motivity were merely the result of elective affinities. . . . 
From France, Germany, and Great Britain the dregs of infidelity 



24 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

were vomited upon us. From the ' System de la Nature ' and the 
' Philosophical Dictionary ' down to the ' Political Justice ' of 
Godwin and the ' Age of Reason,' the whole mass of pollution 
was emptied upon this country. The last two publications flowed 
in upon us as a deluge. An enormous edition of the ' Age of 
Reason ' was published in France and sent over to America, to be 
sold at a few pence per copy, and, where it could not be sold, to 
be given away." 

In the Pastoral Letter issued in 1798 by the General 
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, the tocsin of 
alarm was sounded, and this earnest expostulation was 
made : 

" When formidable innovations and convulsions in Europe 
threaten destruction to morals and religion ; when scenes of dev- 
astation and bloodshed, unexampled in the history of modern 
nations, have convulsed the world ; and when our own country is 
threatened with similar calamities, insensibility in us would be 
stupidity ; silence would be criminal. . . . We desire to 
direct your awakened attention toward that bursting storm, 
which threatens to sweep before it the religious principles, insti- 
tutions, and morals of our people. We are filled with deep con- 
cern and awful dread, while we aunounce it as our conviction that 
the eternal God has a controversy with our nation, and is about 
to visit us in his sore displeasure. . . . We perceive with 
pain and fearful apprehension a general dereliction of religious 
principle and practice among our fellow-citizens ; a great depart- 
ure from the faith and simple purity of manners for which our 
fathers were remarkable ; a visible and prevailing impiety and 
contempt for the laws and institutions of religion ; and an abound- 
ing infidelity, which, in many instances, tends to atheism itself." 

In this alarming condition, of things they say : 

u A dissolution of religious society seems to be threatened by 
the supineness and inattention of many ministers and professors 
of Christianity." 

u Formality and deadness, not to say hypocrisy, a contempt for 
vital godliness and the spirit of fervent piety, a desertion of the 



INFIDELITY AN INGLORIOUS FAILURE. 25 

ordinances, or a cold and unprofitable attendance upon them, 
visibly pervaded every part of the Church. 1 ' 

" The profligacy and corruption of public morals have advanced 
with a progress proportioned to our declension in religion. Fro- 
faneness, pride, luxury, injustice, intemperance, lewdness, and 
every species of debauchery and loose indulgence, greatly 
abound.' ' 

And what must have been the condition of public 
morals when Jefferson could say of the Press : " Noth- 
ing now is believed which is seen in the newspapers. 
Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that 
polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misap- 
prehension is known only to those who are in a condi- 
tion to confront facts within their knowledge with the 
lies of the day." 

This is an index finger. This illustrates how infidel- 
ity had seized the Press — that mighty engine of public 
opinion. But contrast the present with the past. Who 
vrill not say there has been a wonderful improvement ? 
To the honor of the Metropolitan Press of this great city, 
let it be said that, during the recent infidel convention 
at Rochester, all our great daily journals not only con- 
demned the purpose of the convention, but showed how 
futile must be all such attempts to overthrow the divine 
religion which had gained the good- will and assent of 
the. people of our country. 

One hundred years ago duelling was a national vice, 
and a duellist was elected Vice-President of the United 
States. Could such a candidate be elected in our day ? 
Has not the Christian public sentiment of this country 
placed the duello under the ban of public condemnation ? 
Then, profanity, intemperance, and Sabbath desecration 
held high carnival, while now all respectable citizens 
hold these vices in utter reprobation. 



26 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPH A XT. 

Infidelity had permeated the American colleges, and a 
hundred years ago unbelief was rife therein. Yale was 
pervaded with scepticism, and in 1745 not five of her 
students were members of the Church. Students of the 
Senior Class felt proud to be called " Voltaire," " Did- 
erot," "D'Alembert," " Rousseau," " Robespierre," 
and "Danton." Princeton College was no better. 
William and Mary College was called a hot-bed of in- 
fidelity. Transylvania University, in Kentucky, found- 
ed by the Presbyterians, was captured by the infidels. 

Kow behold the change in the college life of this Re- 
public ! Christianity has secured and retains a hold 
upon the intellect and culture of our age and nation. 

In fifty years — from 1830 to 1880 — the students in 
Christian colleges increased twice as much, relatively, 
as did the population of the country. Prior to 1800 
there were twelve denominational and eight non-denom- 
inational colleges. In 1878 there were three hundred 
and twelve of the first class and sixty-four of the second 
class — a clear gain of three hundred as against fifty-six. 
Of the sixty-four non-denominational institutions, 
twenty-three were State universities, and more than half 
of them are to-day under the direction of Christian 
divines. As an expression of the Christian sentiment of 
this country, and of the fact that the religion of Jesus 
has not lost the control of higher education, it is a statis- 
tical fact that the property of the denominational col- 
leges is valued at sixty-nine millions of dollars, while that 
of the non-denominational colleges is only twenty-one 
millions. Sixty-nine millions for Christian education ! 
In the last seven years, Princeton has received through 
President McCosh one million four hundred thousand 
dollars in endowments. 

In the last thirty years there were 31,000 students in 



INFIDELITY AX INGLORIOUS FAILUBE. 27 

our colleges, of whom 25,000 were in Christian institu- 
tions. In 1880, out of 12,000 college students in sixty- 
five colleges, over 6000 were church members. By a 
recent canvass it was ascertained that out of 1400 
Harvard graduates who had left that venerable institu- 
tion within the last ten years, only two w T ere sceptics — 
one an atheist and one an agnostic — which means a 
know-nothing. 

Where are the infidel colleges ? The unbelievers 
have wealth and intelligence, but they have not had 
either the heart, or the benevolence, or the conviction, 
to consecrate a solitary college in the interest of their un- 
belief. They boast that science is the radical enemy of 
the religion of Jesus, and yet they have been unwilling 
to consecrate their wealth to accomplish the end ! " Ye 
shall know them by their fruits." 

Without intending the least reflection upon those 
noble people who are members of what are knowm as 
Liberal churches, yet, to illustrate the positive growth 
of evangelical religion in these States, let ns turn to the 
increase of Evangelical churches over those devoted to 
Liberal doctrines. Eighty years ago, in and around 
Boston, and within a radius of ten miles, there were 23 
Liberal churches and 18 Evangelical churches. Now, 
while there are there 81 of the former, there are 287 of 
the latter. 

Infidelity has failed to organize noble charities. 
Under whose control are the great charities of the world 
— organized, systematic, munificently endowed ? Are 
they not associated with Christian denominations ? 
Christians lead in all these Godlike charities — for the 
blind, the deaf, the dumb, the insane, the idiotic, the 
paralytic, the inebriate, the widow and the orphan. 
Let infidelity wave all her banners, let her display her 



28 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

victories, and what do they amount to ? The unbe- 
lievers boast of their benevolence ; that the milk of 
human kindness flows through their veins ; that they are 
the open enemies of superstition and. ignorant idolatry ; 
that they seek to emancipate the common intellect, to 
arouse the conscience, to respond to justice ; they assert 
the brotherhood of man and the rights of all individuals ; 
they pretend, in short, to seek the elevation of the race. 
But how many infidel missionaries have gone abroad to 
enlighten their pagan brethren ? What have they done 
for China, Japan, and India ? From their ardent pro- 
fessions of philanthropy, one would, suppose that they 
would organize a band of heroic missionaries and send 
them wherever idolatry degrades and wherever supersti- 
tion prevails. This is their duty ; this is their profession. 
But instead of promoting virtue, they have propagated 
vice. They have flooded those pagan lands with obscene 
literature and obscene pictures. They have founded no 
schools of learning, nor houses of mercy, to elevate and 
bless their pagan brethren. But Christian men conse- 
crate their millions for the conversion of the world. 
Heroic men and women, taking their lives in their 
hands, have gone into the very heart of the Dark Conti- 
nent, have stood amid the eternal snows of the Hima- 
layas, have endured the burning sun of the equator — have 
wandered wherever the human heart palpitates and the 
human soul aspires — to throw the light of a benevolent 
truth upon the pathway of those walking in darkness and 
in the shadow of death. 

Infidelity has failed to reform the vicious, and to save 
the fallen. How many drunkards have the infidels re- 
formed, and how many fallen women have they res- 
cued ? How many neglected children have they gather- 
ed into houses of mercy ? How many Jerry McAuley 



INFIDELITY AN INGLORIOUS FAILURE. 29 

Missions have they organized ? When a sojourner in 
London I heard the testimony of the converted pugilist 
Bendigo. He said : " This is my third visit to the city. 
The first time I came, it was to whip Deaf Burke, and 1 
whipped him. The second time 1 came, it was to whip 
Ben Gaunt, and I whipped him. This time I come to 
whip the Devil, and I expect to whip him. "W hen I was a 
miserable, debased drunkard, a Wesleyan revivalist came 
to Nottingham, where I lived, and I was induced to hear 
him preach. His first sermon was on the betrayal of 
Jesus by Judas and the ruffians of Jerusalem. When 
he described how those Jerusalem ruffians were pitching 
on that pure and innocent man, I felt that I would like 
to be there and clean them all out. The second sermon 
I heard was on the conversion of Saul the Tartar, and 
then I thought that if Jesus could save a Tartar He 
could save me. He did save me, and here I am to-day 
to testify to His saving power. 5 ' How many Bendigos 
lias infidelity thus saved ? This man is only one of a 
million rescued every year and brought into honest and 
industrious Christian citizenship. And it is a fact not 
to be gainsaid that, notwithstanding the pomp and blus- 
ter of infidelity, it has furnished no self-sufficient and 
satisfactory substitute for Christianity. Infidelity has 
the torch to burn and destroy, but not the hammer and 
the trowel to build. 

Infidelity has failed to answer the great arguments for 
Christianity. Miracles and prophecies still challenge 
contradiction. The unbelievers must first plough up 
and utterly obliterate the ruins of Egypt, of Babylon, 
of Nineveh, of Si don, of Tyre, and of Jerusalem, before 
they can destroy the proof that comes from the lips of 
the holy prophets. Time and again, times without 
number, the objector's arguments have been answered ; 



oO CHRISTIANITY" TRIUMPHANT. 

and to-day lie is thrown upon the defensive and feels 
compelled to adopt Christian nomenclature to express 
his agnostic sentiments. 

Viewed in the light of these facts, infidelity must be 
pronounced an inglorious failure. 

It is not pretended that great changes have not taken 
place in the beliefs of mankind, especially as to dogmas. 
These changes, however, came not from the outside, but 
from the inside of the Church, and the purification of 
theology is not the putrefaction of Christianity. 

Great changes in the statement of Truth have been 
made, but not in the fundamental truths themselves. 
There has been a liberation from arbitrary systems of 
teaching, but the essential truths abide, and mankind 
clings to them as dearer than life. Dr. Dorchester says : 

" Striking to the core, we find them still cherished by the 
churches. Take the great working doctrines of Christianity, strip 
off the husks, and state them in their simple forms : there is a 
personal Deity ; God is a sovereign ; He is a being of infinite per- 
fections ; He is the ultimate source of life and being ; a mysteri- 
ous Threeness, so distinct as to justify the use of three distinct 
names and the personal pronouns, is united in the oneness of the 
Godhead ; the Bible is the divinely inspired book ; it is so in- 
spired as to be the authoritative rule of faith and practice ; the 
soul is immaterial and immortal ; man is accountable to God ; he 
is so depraved and weak as to need a Saviour ; he must be spirit- 
ually changed in order to rise into harmony with holiness ; what- 
ever education or culture may do, the Holy Spirit is the efficient 
agent in effecting this change ; supreme Deity was embodied in 
the personage Christ Jesus ; the death of Christ and His resurrec- 
tion is the sole basis of pardon and ground of hope for sinners ; 
the effects of faith in Christ are the love of God shed abroad in 
the heart and a new life ; Christ will personally come the second 
time ; He will raise the dead ; there will be a day of future gen- 
eral judgment, and a state of fixedness of character involving 
endless retribution and reward in the future world. These vital 



INFIDELITY AN INGLOEIOUS FAILURE. 31 

centres of the doctrines of Christianity are' held, with little dis- 
sent, by all the denominations of evangelical Protestantism. The 
exceptions are exceedingly rare among men capable of construct- 
ing a system, and there is no prospect of a change in these essen- 
tial elements. Christianity is losing nothing of its inherent 
original self — only that which human imperfection, subtlety, and 
folly have attached to it, trammelling and falsifying it." 

I am satisfied, from a long observation of men who 
try to be unbelievers, that, underlying their unbelief, 
there is a latent conviction that, after all, Christianity 
may be true. On his death-bed an infidel requested to 
be buried by the side of his Christian wife and daughter, 
and when asked why, his response was, " If there be a 
resurrection of the righteous, they will get me up some- 
how or other, and take me with them." This little in- 
cident reveals the heart, tells the story of the longings of 
an immortal soul, and voices a common humanity. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CRIMINALITY OF INFIDELITY. 

Nineteen centuries ago the infidels of Jerusalem com- 
mitted the highest crime known to the Universe. Hav- 
ing rejected all His teachings, all His miracles, all His 
virtues, they crucified the Son of God. History repeats 
itself in the infidels of New York, for they crucify to 
themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an 
open shame. 

The voice of warning comes thundering down the 
centuries. The impious imprecation of the murderers 
of Calvary has been realized. Cursed, scathed, scat- 
tered, they have been crushed and trampled beneath the . 
heel of an unfeeling world. As it was madness in them 
to invoke the curse upon themselves, so it was barbarity 
to seek to entail it upon their posterity. Ostrich-like, 
they were hardened against their young. " His blood 
be upon us and upon our children," was an imprecation 
as audacious as it was reckless. 

What happened once will occur again. The rejection 
of Christ now T is the w T ild forfeiture of all the blessings 
which He bestows upon individuals, families, and 
nations. The law of cause and effect holds in morals as 
in physics. Eesults are inevitable. All that is grand 
in our civilization, all that is beneficent in our ethics, 
all that is saving in the Gospel, appeals to modern infi- 
delity not to invoke His blood upon us. Nay, more : 
unborn childhood utters that appeal. 



THE CRIMINALITY OF INFIDELITY. 33 

That which weakens man's moral power to resist vice 
is a crime against society. To do that is to be at least 
accessory to the crime. It prepares the way for its com- 
mission. 

Vice is destructive of all that we hold dear. Yice is 
destructive of life, property, chastity, patriotism, and 
happiness. 

The power to resist temptation to vice is a variable 
force, which may be increased to the maximum — God ; 
or decreased to the minimum — the Devil. That force 
may be reduced to nothing, either by the annihilation of 
the distinction between vice or virtue ; or, by familiarity 
with vice ; or, by destroying the conviction of the exist- 
ence of a personal God, who has the power, and who 
will enforce His laws. 

Call conscience what you please, it may be cultivated 
or neglected. There are three prime factors in an edu- 
cated conscience : belief in a personal God, reverence 
for His laws, and dread of His displeasure. God is the 
supreme reason of virtue. Men may plead the eternal 
fitness, the greatest good, but back of these is God, the 
Creator, Proprietor, and Sovereign of all things. 
Because He has a proprietorship in man, He claims the 
right to dictate his conduct. .Wo God, no authority for 
virtue ; no God, no standard for virtue ; no God, no 
definition of virtue ; no God, no virtue. "Without 
Him virtue is but an expediency, a social compact, a 
human stipulation to be enforced or broken at will. 
Virtue must be under the dominion of law, must be 
the expression of the legislative will of the Creator, 
whose right it is to command, whose power is potent 
to execute. To deny this is to place virtue under the 
dominion of the passions. There must be authority 
somewhere to say what virtue is ; to demand of man, 



34 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

" Thou shalt. " If I may not appropriate the property 
of another, I must know the authority of Him who says, 
" Thou shalt not steal." If I may not falsify truth, I 
must know by what authority it is said, " Thou shalt not 
lie." 

There must be reverence for His laws and respect for 
His person, character, and authority. Hear His restrain- 
ing power : " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of 
wisdom." That is reverence for His will touching 
human conduct ; and in this respect there is a dread of 
His displeasure. He is capable of displeasure, which 
He manifests by the execution of the penalties of His 
violated law. Like Hope and Love, Fear is a natural 
passion of the soul. By what power can you deter 
men from vice and crime ? By the dread of the dis- 
pleasure of good men. That displeasure is the result of 
their religious education. Do you plead the beneficence 
of public morals ? That comes from the order and con- 
stitution of nature, whose author is God. Ivlen may 
believe in that beneficence, but we have the present as 
more powerful than the future. .Now teach them that 
future, both in this life and in the life to come, that in 
both worlds they will meet their God, and virtue will 
ensue from that belief. By what power are the danger- 
ous classes in New York held in check? There are 
social elements here which await the tocsin of revolt ; 
but those elements are held in check by the conviction 
that somewhere in this city .is a force equal to the main- 
tenance of law and order. Destroy that conviction, and 
New York would be in the hands of the mob. Con- 
vince the people that there is no God, and all that is vile 
and injurious would set at defiance all the claims of high 
morality. 

Modern infidelity is an impious assertion that there is 



THE CRIMINALITY OF INFIDELITY. o5 

no power in the universe to punish vice. This dimin- 
ishes the moral force of man to resist evil ; for crime 
loses its character in a community by prevalence and as- 
similation. Bigamy is a virtue in Utah, and will be in 
'New York, if infidelity prevails. 

Infidelity subverts the very foundation of morals and 
elevates expediency to the dignity of law. All men are 
equals. "Without God as its authoritative reason, moral- 
ity is but a social compact ; so that man will be virtuous 
or vicious as his passions incline. Are you willing to ac- 
cept this alternative ? Do you plead the beneficence of 
public morals ? But where there is no God and no 
future, men will be governed by the present. Some- 
times vice subserves present interests, as when a lie 
would save from martyrdom, or duplicity would save a 
citizen from poverty, or deception in trade would secure 
a fortune. But teach men their responsibility to their 
Creator, and that after this brief life they will stand be- 
fore their Judge, and this very faith will transform 
them into men with the spirit and character of Moses, 
who had respect unto the recompense of reward. Re- 
wards and punishments, administered by an infinite 
Being, appeal to the higher and better instincts of our 
nature. Just in proportion as men fail to practise the 
moral precepts of Christianity, crime increases in the 
land. 

Now consider the destructive effect of unbelief upon 
Government, Commerce, and Home. 

Government. — The manifold blessings of govern- 
ment to civilized society are conceded. The stability of 
government is either in a moral sentiment, or in a stand- 
ing army. Force is necessary, and it is either moral or 
physical. It is God or a bayonet, the Bible or a Gat- 
ling gun, a pulpit or a rifle. If the force necessary to 



36 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

maintain government is physical, it is either military or 
legislative. In this country it is not military, as we 
have a standing army of less than twenty-five thousand 
men to a population of over fifty millions of people ; 
and some persons believe that the millennium is so near 
that our regular army should be disbanded. Our police, 
in this city of a million and a half of people, is less than 
three thousand ; and yet, in this great metropolis life, 
property and reputation are secure. The statesman at- 
tributes the stability and prosperity of society to the 
genius and power of law. He assumes that, inasmuch as 
vice flows from ignorance and poverty, virtue will issue 
from knowledge and competency ; these from public jus- 
tice, and public justice from an administration of govern- 
ment which is wise and liberal, but strong to execute and 
severe to punish. Yet all history is in proof that, while 
law may dictate, may guide, may conserve, it cannot 
prevent crime nor reform the vicious. This twofold 
power does not inhere in law, or in its penalties. Vice 
and virtue lie beyond the reach and scope of law, 
w r hether human or divine. All forms of government 
have failed to suppress vice and develop virtue. Under 
the worst forms of government the best men have lived 
• — as the apostles under the Neros, the Waldenses under 
the Pontiffs, the Puritans under the Stuarts ; and under 
the best forms of government the worst men have lived 
— as drunkards, murderers and traitors. Vice and virtue 
are independent of government. The statesman forgets 
that he has to deal with individuality, that he can oper- 
ate only from without, whereas the evil lies within. 
Man is not a block of marble to yield to the chisel of the 
sculptor, but is a living force which resists external con- 
tact. Moral corruption precedes political ruin. The 
love of luxury, the love of wealth, and the love of power 



THE CRIMINALITY OF INFIDELITY. 37 

have been the destroying angels of the republics of earth. 
Moral sentiment lies back of constitutions, back of laws, 
back of administration. The political conscience which 
conserves the commonwealth comes from a religious edu- 
cation. D'Alembert has said there are two things 
which can reach the top of the pyramid of liberty — 
" the eagle and the reptile" — the eagle of Virtue and 
the reptile of Vice. 

Let us judge of the future by the past. What was the 
effect of the wanton destruction of belief in a personal 
God — the supreme reason of virtue — in the time of the 
French Revolution ? In the years 1792-93 France passed 
through all those social and political conditions such as 
centralization, despotism, revolution, anarchy, and crime. 
In the venerable Cathedral of Notre Dame, in the year 
1793, the atheists of Paris made their public profession 
of atheism, and commemorated the act bv the corona- 
tion of a painted harlot as the Goddess of Reason. 
Philosophers and demagogues, encyclopedists and pam- 
phleteers, princes and subalterns, banded and leagued 
together to give organic structure to vice, and to elevate 
unbelief to the dignity of a virtue. "What followed ? 
Anarchy took the place of government ; men of letters 
were proscribed and banished ; patriots w r ere murdered 
or exiled ; churches were sacked, and their altars pol- 
luted ; licentiousness held high carnival in the invaded 
homes of the first families of France ; murder stalked 
abroad at high noon ; the streets of that beautiful capital 
ran with human blood, and 14,000 persons were slain in 
the massacre of September ; and in that savage slaughter 
lovely womanhood was despised. The amiable princess 
Lamballe was dragged, hideously mutilated, through 
the streets ; the saintly Madame Elizabeth, in whom pity 
struggled with maiden shame, was compelled to bow r her 



38 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

head to tlie fatal axe, and the heroic Madame Roland 
went to the scaffold exclaiming, " Liberty, O what 
crimes are committed in thy name ! ?? The inhuman 
butchers marched in ghastly procession, carrying on 
spikes the heads of their decapitated victims, and as 
they marched they shouted, " Hang the merchants." 
In their atheistic fury the murderers changed the signifi- 
cance of words. Moderation meant treason ; severity, 
patriotic devotion ; atrocious cruelty, irregular justice ; 
and, in the hour of riot and drunken delirium, out of 
that alembic of hell came forth all the infernal spirits of 
criminal infidelity. 

Commerce. — The spirit that gives birth to such a hell- 
ish brood against government is no less destructive of 
the commercial prosperity of a country. Integrity is 
indispensable to successful commerce and trade. 
Honesty, in the employer and in the employe, is an 
absolute necessity. Business men must have confidence 
in each other. And let it be said to the honor of Chris- 
tian virtue in our country, that, out of 25,000 men em- 
ployed in banking, only one in a thousand proves dishon- 
est in a year. Honesty is not a lost art. And to the 
honor of the Christian ministry let it be recorded that, 
out of 80,000 clergymen in America, not twelve failures 
in morals occur in a year. Christianity is on the side of 
honesty and faith. The royal precept is, "Be diligent 
in business, serving the Lord. ? ' 

But the best principle infidelity has to offer to the 
commercial world is that " Honesty is the best policy." 
Nothing more, nothing higher ; you are to be honest, not 
because it is right and duty, but because it is politic. 
The infidels offer the commercial world Policy for that 
divine precept, " Thou shalt not steal." They base 
commercial integrity on Policy ; Christians base it on 



THE CRIMINALITY OF INFIDELITY. 39 

Conscience. I appeal to the men of business : Were yon 
about to employ a young man, which of two young men 
would you select — an atheist, whose favorite companion 
authors are Voltaire, Rousseau, and Paine ; or he whose 
model is Christ, and whose chosen companion authors 
are Paley, Addison, and "Washington Irving ? I appeal 
to you, merchants and bankers : Were you to write 
over the door of your store or your counting-house, 

" There is no God," 
and 

"Death is an Eternal Sleep," 

in whom could you confide, and. who would confide in 
you ? And what further would follow ? There would 
be no abhorrence of vice in either buyer or seller ; the 
most potent incentive to virtue would be removed, and 
communism would demand your property. I do not say 
that every infidel is a communist, but I do say that every 
communist is an infidel. Honesty is duty, and Chris- 
tianity makes it such. 

Home. — If unbelief is so disastrous to government and 
commerce, what are its blighting effects upon the house- 
holds of our land ? Home is the centre of happiness. 
For this the father toils, for this the mother prays. It 
is the inspiration of industry. Men and women who lose 
sight of domestic happiness are bereft of all that is noble. 
Home is the pivot of all that is beneficent in the State 
and salutary in the Church. As is the home, so is the 
Church and the nation. The family is the oldest of hu- 
man institutions. The dearest relation on earth is that 
of husband and wife, and the strongest bond of that 
union is love. Parental care and filial affection are ele- 
ments of a happy home. 



40 CHKISTIAISriTY TRIUMPHANT. 

But, with a ruthless hand, infidelity strikes at the root 
of domestic bliss. It confers freedom on husband and 
wife, to find companionship in others by mutual con- 
sent, or by divorce. It inverts the eternal order of 
things. Instead of that holy passion known as love, 
which prefers one oi\t of the many, the freethinker of 
to-day teaches benevolence to the whole human species, 
and love for no one in particular. He melts with ten- 
derness for all mankind, and then sends his children to 
the hospital for foundlings. I do not say that all free- 
thinkers are free-lovers, but it is true that all free- lovers 
are freethinkers, and they constitute the majority of 
unbelievers. Look at the authors they read. Rousseau, 
who offered to his Maker a polluted life ; Chesterfield, 
whose salacious letters are repellent, and Bennett, who 
suffered incarceration for circulating through the mails 
his obscene literature — these are their favorite authors. 
It is infidelity which demands that the marriage cere- 
mony shall be stripped of every religious element, and 
reduced to a civil rite, and that social affinities shall be 
the rule of action. 

But Christianity teaches that the eternal order of 
nature is first the family and then the race ; individual 
attachment between husband and wife, parent and child, 
and then to do good to all men ; jurisdiction and control 
over the private affections, so that their indulgence shall 
not be detrimental to the home, nor destructive of the 
family tie. It is to our homes that Christ comes with 
His tenderest consolation. But infidelity would rob us 
of those consolations, and has nothing adequate to offer 
in return. Take these figures, as the highest commen- 
dation of Christian homes : In the families of 35 minis- 
ters there were 141 children, 15 years and over ; in that 
number there were 89 professors of religion, 15 pious 



THE CRIMINALITY OF INFIDELITY, 41 

but not church members, 19 ministers, 33 upright citi- 
zens, and only 4 intemperate sons. In 172 Christian 
families there were 796 children, 15 "years old and over, 
450 of whom were professed Christians, 46 pious but not 
church members, 17 ministers, 284 reputable citizens 
without church connection, and only sixteen addicted to 
intemperance. Can infidelity, out of 207 families, where- 
in are 937 children of that age, make a showing so repu- 
table and honorable as this ? 

Infidelity is robbery, inasmuch as it takes from man 
that which is honorable in itself, and offers as a substi- 
tute that which has no compensating power. The 
wanton destruction of an imaginary good, when harmless 
in itself, should not be permitted without a reasonable 
substitute. If Christ is an imaginary being, but the most 
perfect, beneficent, and lovely known to man, no attempt 
should be made to destroy our admiration and love for 
Him. Let me dwell in the presence of that glorious 
ideal. Let me bathe my spirit in the atmosphere that 
surrounds His memory. Let me be changed from glory 
to glory into His beautiful image. 

If prayer is an imaginary solace to me in life's darkest 
hour, when communion with no other being would bring 
comfort to my heart, let me linger undisturbed at the 
Throne of Mercy and fancy that my complaint enters the 
ear of a Father divine, and that in answer thereto He 
breathes sweet peace upon my spirit. If God is an im- 
aginary being, yet to me the Creator and Preserver of 
all things, the Supreme Ruler of Nature, in whose good- 
ness and power I may trust, whose commands I am to 
obey, whose frown I am to dread, whose smile I am to 
covet, do not take Him from me, do not prove that He 
does not exist, do not tell me that I know Ilim not, but 
let me dream that He is. Are angels a fancy ? There 



42 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHAi^T. 

is a legend among the Irish peasants that, when a little 
child laughs in its sleep, the angels are whispering to it. 
It is a harmless legend, and he who proves it false, 
without furnishing a better substitute, commits robbery 
against childhood. Is the peaceful triumph that comes 
to the dying saint an imagination ? Let him not be un- 
deceived ; let his departing soul mount on the wings of 
hope, and let the last accents of time be those of triumph 
to surviving friends. Is heaven a dream where the dead 
of earth are aw T aiting us, where pleasure never wears a 
fringe of woe, where youth is immortal, where happiness 
is eternal ? Let me dream of such a heaven. He is a 
robber against my individual rights who takes from me 
that w T hich imparts so much strength and consolation 
without giving me a reasonable substitute. 

But Christianity is not an imaginary good. It is a 
sublime reality. All the proofs of high-born conscious- 
ness, all the deductions of the highest reason, all the de- 
cisions of the calmest judgment, all the experience and 
observation of the ages, are in proof that Christianity is 
a sublime reality. What substitute have infidels to 
offer ? For God, a molecule ; for Christ, Yoltaire ; for 
the consolations of Grace, human philosophy. 

Suppose the unbeliever could accomplish his mighty 
work of destruction — the Cross trampled upon, the relig- 
ion of Christ everywhere proscribed, churches demol- 
ished, Bibles burned, ministers banished, the Sabbath 
abolished and faith destroyed, what advantages will 
accrue to our country and to ourselves from the ex- 
change ? Absolutely none. 



CHAPTER IV. 

GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 

It is fair to judge of a system by its practical results. 
For, in this age, we ask what is the beneficence or the 
malevolence of any system of religious truth, or of any 
form of religious worship. It is proper to inquire into 
the character of the disciples it has produced. The 
question is, Are they made better by the conformity of 
their lives to certain rules of conduct ? Or, Are they 
made worse by their beliefs ? I am willing, at all times 
and under all circumstances, to have Christianity judged 
by the character and influence of the disciples which 
Christianity produces. So, on the other hand, I must 
judge of infidelity by the character and influence of the 
disciples which infidelity produces. " Ye shall know 
them by their fruits. ' ' 

On a Sabbath night, in the Academy of Music, in the 
city of New York, three thousand men and a few women 
each paid a dollar admission to hear their Maker cursed 
and their Saviour ridiculed. The speaker was com- 
petent to the task. For a man could ridicule his mother, 
if he were mean enough to do it. This man found the 
buffoonery of infidelity profitable and clutched the 
"thirty pieces of silver." It was a brazen attempt to 
show that the glory of our civilization is due to impiety. 
Six well-known infidels were eulogized as the greatest 
reformers and benefactors. 

It has been common to contrast the best infidels with 



44 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

the worst Christians. There is neither logic nor fairness 
in that. But, to be logical and consistent, let us com- 
pare the worst Christians with the worst infidels, and the 
best infidels with the best Christians. 

I shall pass in reverent silence the " glorious company 
of the apostles," the " goodly fellowship of the proph- 
ets," and the " noble army of martyrs," and call to the 
front those great men whose faith and practice have 
made illustrious the last three hundred years. I shall 
place in conspicuous juxtaposition six eminent Christians 
against the six eminent infidels : 

Washington vs. Julian. 
Luther vs. Voltaire. 
Kewton vs. Spinoza- 
Bacon vs. Diderot. * 
Chalmers vs. Hume. 
Wesley vs. Paine. 

Let us take Julian, the emperor, philosopher, soldier, 
and pontiff of the Pagans, who is the boast of the infidel 
world. I admit that his administration of the Roman 
Empire was marvellous, and that he fairly won the title 
of philosopher ; so that he comes down to us in history 
not only with the imperial purple on his shoulders and 
the royal diadem on his brow, but also crowned with the 
laurel chaplet of philosophic honor. But analyze his 
character. Say all you can in his favor, yet the loftiest 
eulogies will not cover his crimes. lie was an ingrate ; 
he was an apostate ; he was a hypocrite. He had been 
preserved from massacre, cared for as an orphan, ten- 
derly educated, invested with the title of Caesar, and 
appointed to command the army of Gaul by his royal 
uncle, Constantius. But he conspired and rebelled 




GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 45 

against that uncle, permitted the soldiers to proclaim him 
emperor and to call him Augustus under a pretended 
sign from Jupiter, and then he hastened to seize the 
throne of the empire. He prided himself on his tem- 
perance, chastity, and clemency, but in person was as 
filthy as a Hindoo fakir. He apostatized from Chris- 
tianity, and became the pontiff of the Pagan divinities. 
It is Gibbon who says that for ten years Julian played 
the hypocrite in assisting at Christian festivals, and then 
burning incense to Jupiter and Mars. And this he did 
to secure the popular favor of both Christians and 
Pagans. He offered sacrifices to the gods, believed in 
magic, and was superstitious to a crime. He issued an 
edict for religious toleration, and then banished Athana- 
sius, destroyed those noble treatises which had been pre- 
pared in defence of Christianity, excluded Christians 
from all civil offices, from being teachers in the public 
schools, changed their name to " Nazarenes" by a royal 
edict, permitted their persecution, and then laughed at 
their complaints. He transferred the revenues of Chris- 
tian churches to heathen priests, abolished Christian 
schools, and compelled Christians to build Pagan tem- 
ples. Prom being a Christian, he became a Pagan, and 
sought to restore all the superstitions of Pagan worship. 
What permanent good has he been to mankind ? Is he 
a benefactor who should be held up as a model for 
American youth ? 

Over against Julian the apostate we place the immor- 
tal Washington. He had all the temperance, chastity, 
and clemency of Julian, without his vices. His moral 
character was without a stain. His manly virtues blend- 
ed into harmony like the colors in the Noachian rain- 
bow. His intellect was clear and sound. He, too, was 
offered a crown by his soldiers, but he reiected it as a 



46 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

crime against the sacred cause for which he fought. The 
benedictions of a grateful people are the crown of his 
glory. His modesty, justice, and self-control were mar- 
vellous. He left the impress of his statesmanship upon 
our National Constitution. As a warrior, he fought for 
the liberty of all men ; and to-day his name is hailed 
with acclamations of gratitude and delight wherever 
men struggle for freedom. 

And in this connection I may say that it is a crime 
against hist or v to assert that Jefferson and Franklin were 

O <j 

brazen infidels. 

As the author of the Declaration of Independence, 
Jefferson therein thrice reverently mentions the Creator 
as the " Gocl of Nature," as the " Supreme Judge of 
the world," and as " Providence," wherein our fathers 
firmly trusted for {i protection." That Declaration was 
the basis of our Constitution, and there is nothing in the 
latter not found in substance in the former. Jefferson 
was absent from the country when, the Federal Constitu- 
tion was drafted and adopted, and when he saw it he 
opposed it. In 1784 Congress appointed him Minister 
Plenipotentiary to act with Franklin and Adams in nego- 
tiating treaties of commerce and amity with foreign 
powers ; and in 1785 he succeeded Franklin as Resident 
Minister at Paris, and did not return to America until 
September, 1789, reaching Virginia soon after the elec- 
tion of Washington as first President of the United 
States. The Federal Constitution, then recently adopt- 
ed, did not meet his approval. He declared that he did 
not know whether the good or bad predominated ; but 
subsequently he thought more favorably of it. It was 
not Jefferson who excluded the name of God from the 
Constitution. Jefferson had placed that holy name in 
the Declaration of Independence. That was recognition 



GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 47 

enough. Our fathers wisely framed for its a government 
which is non-religious, but not irreligious. It is non- 
religious, in that it does not interfere, directly or indi- 
rectly, in the faith or worship of the citizen. It is not 
irreligious, because it recognizes God in His sovereignty 
as Creator, as Judge, and heavenly Benefactor. God 
does not want His name written on parchments, but on 
the hearts of His people. The name of God was written 
all over the Jewish commonwealth, and such was the 
pretended reverence for one form of His adorable name, 
that its utterance was forbidden ; yet the Jews crucified 
the Son of God, The name of Christ was inscribed on 
every j>art of the Roman Empire under Constantine the 
Great and the Roman Pontiffs. Yet that vast empire, 
both political and ecclesiastical, has disappeared from the 
face of the earth. His precious name was emblazoned 
everywhere in France under the empire ; and if France 
did not go to the devil, the devil went to France. 

is or was Franklin a brazen infidel. If he and Jeffer- 
son had their doubts, their glorious acts bespeak their 
faith. 

Yoltaire, the brilliant Frenchman, whose eminent* tal- 
ents and ripe scholarship all acknowledge, lived from 
1694 to 1778. He was a charming writer ; he wrote 
poetry, history, dramas, philosophy, and romance. He 
was the companion of kings and the favorite of the great. 
But his writings are against private virtue and public 
morality. His " Pucelle " is one continued sneer at 
virtue, which he made the subject of contempt and 
ribald laughter, and many parts of it are polluted with 
the grossest obscenities. Was he a patriot, the foe of 
tyrants ? Did he sometimes sympathize with the op- 
pressed, and sometimes befriend the helpless ? Was he 
the enemy of the Jesuits, whom he lampooned with 



48 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

bitter irony ? Did he favor religions toleration and 
weaken the power of Romanism ? But he did only what 
thousands had done before him. And in all that he ever 
wrote he gave the world no new thought and threw no 
new light on the great problems of humanity. His 
name to-day is powerless for good. His self-esteem was 
inordinate, and his vanity knew no bounds. He w T as the 
clown of literature. He confounded a perverted Church 
w T ith a divine Christianity, and sought the ruin of both. 
His private life was a scandal, even to his own corrupt 
age. When secretary to the Marquis Chateauneuf, at 
the Hague, in the United Provinces, he ruined the 
young daughter of Madame du Eoyer, and was com- 
pelled to fly the Hague to escape the fury of an enraged 
mother. When he fled from Paris to escape the officers 
of the law, he found a retreat in Cirey, on the borders 
of Lorraine, where he was kindly received by M. Chate- 
let, whose hospitality he violated by a liaison with the 
wife of his host, the famous Madame Chatelet, and which 
continued while she lived, during sixteen years, and that, 
toOj while her husband was yet alive. And he'boasted 
that he was the favorite of Madame Pompadour before 
she became the favorite of Louis XV. Is he a man to 
be held up as a model to the young men of America ? 
It was boastfully said that "he had done more for 
human liberty than any other man who had ever lived." 
What has he done ? He precipitated the bloodiest revo- 
lution on record, which left France and all Europe in a 
tenfold worse condition. Did he orjpose Romanism ? 
He did only what had been done by mightier men. 
Three hundred and seventy years before his day, Wiclif 
was a martyr to religious liberty. Three hundred and 
twenty-one years prior to his time, Huss had died for 
the truth. Two hundred and forty years before the 



GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 49 

time of Voltaire, Savonarola offered himself as a sacrifice 
on the altar of freedom. These are the apostles of relig- 
ious liberty. Who ever heard of an infidel dying a 
martyr ? Infidels do not like a warm climate, either in 
this world or in the world to come. 

Two hundred years before Voltaire- s day Luther tool: 
up arms against the Church and the empire. He ap- 
peared when ignorance fell like a pall of death upon the 
nations of mediaeval times ; when degrading superstition 
had enkindled the wildest fanaticism and created the 
most terrific alarm ; when the degeneracy of the age had 
turned the earth into a moral lazaretto ; when priests 
were letterless and popes oppressors. Ascending the 
moral heavens like a flaming meteor, he dispelled the 
gloom of a night of a thousand years, and with the key 
seen in the visions of Patmos he unlocked the spiritual 
dungeons of the nations of the earth. With the self- 
reliance and heroism, the learning and piety, of a true 
reformer, he preached the divine gospel. His burning 
words fell upon the ear of astonished Europe, startling 
as the boom of a thousand cannon, Leo X. trembled on 
his throne, and the Reformation moved forward resist- 
less as the march of a whirlwind. Had not Luther lived 
I could not have given such free expression to these 
sentiments as I have here ; for Luther, and not Voltaire, 
must be esteemed the great apostle of religious liberty. 

Spinoza, the pantheist, a Jew, was born in 1632. His 
intellect was brilliant, but the conclusion of all his rea- 
soning was pantheism. His bold assertion was, " What- 
ever is, is God." He was a dreamer. His was a life of 
meditation spent in search of absolute principles, from 
which he hoped to deduce the character of the universe, 
of God, and of man. But what great truth has Spinoza 
given to the world ? In what sense can he be esteemed 



50 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

a benefactor ? Why should we enshrine him in the 
gratitude of our hearts ? 

In contrast with him I place Sir Isaac Newton, the 
devout and the imperishable. Born in 1642, ten years 
after Spinoza, Newton was a careful student of nature, 
and became her confidant and high-priest. Do you ask 
what Christian Newton did for his race ? He discovered 
the " differential calculus," or method of fluxions. He 
made known the great law of universal gravitation, which 
Laplace pronounced " pre-eminent above all other pro- 
ductions of the human intellect." Of his transcendent 
power it is difficult to speak in terms of adequate admi- 
ration. Unlike Spinoza, Newton's great discoveries led 
him to a personal Gocl, whose revealed will he gladly 
obeyed. In Parliament and out, under James II., he 
was the brave defender of civil and religious liberty. 
Spinoza led mankind into midnight ; Newton led the 
world into midday. 

What great service has Diderot rendered human 
liberty, that he should be paraded as an apostle of hu- 
manity ? He was a talented and industrious writer, who 
vainly sought to compass all human knowledge, but who 
lacked both judgment and taste. His fame rests on his 
" Encyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonne des Sciences, 
des Arts, et des Metiers," in which he was assisted by 
D'Alembert, Voltaire, D'Holbach, and others. The 
covert object of this work was to teach infidelity under 
the guise of the advancement of knowledge, and to pre- 
pare the way for the French "Revolution, which dissolved 
society and reddened the streets of Paris with human 
blood. He polluted the youthful mind of France by 
indecent novels. And his published correspondence 
with Voltaire and Grimm gives a gloomy picture of 
French morals. His private life was in keeping there- 



GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT IKFIDELS. 51 

with. He abandoned his lawful wife, and formed an 
attachment, first with Madame Prieusienx, a fifth-rate 
scribbler, and then with Mile. Yoland, a woman of no 
repute. Such is the apostle of free thought presented 
to American society as a model of morality. But what 
great, imperishable thought has Diderot given to man- 
kind ? Does he boast of the French Revolution as the 
monument of his renown? That is a monument of 
blood, and as infamous as the pyramids of human skulls 
reared at Bagdad by Tamerlane — Timur the Lame. 

But rising above him in glory is Francis Bacon, a liv- 
ing encyclopaedia of fundamental principles, of great 
practical suggestions, and of philosophy the most benefi- 
cent. He was born in 1561, and died in 1626. He is 
the greatest benefactor in the republic of letters. The 
glory of his mind was his understanding, which, in its 
minuteness and vastness, was like the tent in story : 
" Fold it, and it seemed a toy in the hand of a lady ; 
spread it, and the armies of the Sultan might repose be- 
neath its shade." He called a halt to the philosophers 
of his day, and turned the corner in the march of learn- 
ing. His inductive philosophy opened a new era in sci- 
ence, and his " Novum Organum Scientiarum" unlocked 
the secrets of nature. The chief end of his methods and 
researches was the well-being of society. To-day he 
stands among the greatest benefactors of mankind. As 
Macaulay says : " Lord Bacon laid the foundation of the 
edifice of learning broad and firm. Observation and ex- 
periment, facts and principles, common-sense and human 
happiness, utility and progress, were the magical words 
of his creed. His philosophy was humane in object and 
progressive in principle. He laid the foundation on 
which others were to rear the glorious superstructure of 
our own day. He predicted a new era ; others discov- 



52 CHBISTIASTITY TRIUMPHANT. 

ered it. lie pointed to the road ; others have travelled 
it. The * Atlantis ' of Bacon is being realized, and the 
house of Solomon is now inhabited." It would be a 
difficult task to recount the beneficial results of ancient 
wisdom ; but if we ask what are the fruits of the Baco- 
nian philosophy, we remind you of the answer of Eng- 
land's greatest historian : " The philosophy of Bacon 
has lengthened life ; it has mitigated pain ; it has given 
new securities to the mariner ; it has furnished new arms 
to the warrior ; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries 
with bridges of form unknown to our fathers ; it has 
guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to 
earth ; it has lighted up the night with the splendor of 
the day ; it has extended the range of the human vision ; 
it has multiplied the power of the human muscle ; it has 
accelerated motion ; it has annihilated distance ; it has 
facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly 
offices, all despatch of business ; it has enabled man to 
descend to the depths of the sea, to soar into the air, to 
penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth, 
to traverse the land in cars which whirl along without 
horses, and the ocean in ships which sail against the 
wind : these are a part of its fruits, and of its first-fruits, 
for it is a philosophy which never rests, which has never 
attained it, which is never perfect. Its law is progress ; 
a point which yesterday was invisible is its goal to-day, 
and will be its starting-point to-morrow." 

Let us now place side by side two Scotchmen, David 
Hume and Thomas Chalmers, and see which is the true 
benefactor of his race ? Living from 1711 to 1776, 
Hume was a great metaphysician and a vigorous writer. 
But he was a sceptic from early manhood, and chose for 
his life-work the mission of " Destroyer of Human Be- 
lief." His great object was to destroy the basis of all 



GREAT CHRISTIAN'S VS. GREAT IOTIDELS. 53 

certainty respecting God, man, and nature, and to prove 
that Doubt is the sole inheritance of our race. He ex- 
alted reason, and falsely assumed that personal experi- 
ence is the test of all religious belief. He called in 
question the testimony of the reliability of the senses, 
which underlies the whole system of the physical 
sciences. He assumed that it was more probable that 
twelve men without motive and against all worldly con- 
siderations would unite in a lie, than that Christ rose 
from the dead. He thus sought to create and perpetuate 
universal scepticism in morals and religion. By his phi- 
losophy he threw doubt over all history by depreciating 
the value of human testimony. He stands before us 
to-day as the brazen iconoclast, seeking the destruction 
of faith, which is the bond of domestic, commercial, and 
religious life. So bitter was he in his infidelity, that he 
became the apologist of Charles I., the calumniator of 
Cromwell, and the traducer of the Puritans ; but addi- 
tional light has shown that as an historian he was biased, 
and is not trustworthy. He had no sympathy with the 
religious element in our nature, and sought to leave the 
world in the uncertainties of unbelief. Can we esteem 
him a benefactor ? Shall we crown him with glory ? Is 
he to be numbered among the apostles of freedom ? 

But his countryman, Thomas Chalmers, awakens de- 
light wherever his name is pronounced. Clear in intel- 
lect and ripe in scholarship, his contributions to the ad- 
vancement of the physical sciences, his discourses on 
commercial integrity, and his efforts as a practical phi- 
lanthropist render him the friend and favorite of his 
race. He was the defender of religious freedom, and 
was the first moderator of the Free Church of Scotland. 
It was not Hume, but it was Chalmers, who, by his 
Christian philanthropy, transformed the worst portion 



54 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

of Edinburgh into an earthly paradise of safety, purity, 
and industry. 

Now let ns place over against each other Paine and 
Wesley. Both were Englishmen, both lived in this 
country, both have exerted an influence on our national 
life. Which is the benefactor ? Wesley was born in 
1703 ; Paine was born in 1737. 

Paine, a soldier of fortune, was an Englishman, an 
American, a Frenchman, as revolution and fortune 
promised the largest reward. He was a patriot of the 
type of the " Wandering Jew." He is remembered in 
our national history because of the eminence of his bad- 
ness. His notoriety is due to the boldness of his infidel- 
ity, which has thrown a historical glamour about his 
name. Pie is remembered just as are Judas and Andre 
and Arnold. His infidelity placed him in bold contrast 
with the Christian fathers of our Republic. And were 
it not for this he would to-day be forgotten, as are hun- 
dreds of others identified with our Revolution. He was 
a vigorous writer, but gave to the world no new and 
beneficent thought. His " Eights of Man," written as 
a reply to Burke's " Reflections on the French Revolu- 
tion," is but a restatement of other men's thoughts, and 
his u Age of Reason" is but a rehash of the sayings of 
earlier infidels, and has not the merit of a new idea, but 
has the demerit of ignorance and obscenity. What has 
been the effect of his life and works ? What great 
charity did he establish ? What beneficent truth did he 
originate ? What great deed merits for him the grati- 
tude of a nation ? He was rewarded by the country far 
beyond his merits, and spent what he received in a disso- 
lute old age. Is he a model for the young men of 
America ? 

But in sublime contrast let us recall the character, the 



GEEAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 55 

life, and the elevating influence of Wesley, the ripe 
scholar, the great organizer, the fruitful writer, a true 
philanthropist, the amiable Christian. Paine died in 
1809 ; Wesley died in 1791. Behold the results of their 
influence upon the character of this country. Gather 
together in some hippodrome all the infidels, all the 
free-lovers, all the communists, with an outside crowd of 
all who wish Christianity false, who despise the marriage 
tie, who pour contempt on law and order, who demand 
license instead of liberty, and you have the spiritual 
progeny which Paine lias begotten. On the other hand, 
follow the sun in his golden course through the heavens, 
and wherever he shines there are the followers of Wesley 
in schools of learning, houses of mercy, halls of justice, 
marts of commerce, temples of piety, educating the 
ignorant, feeding the hungry, reforming the drunkard, 
lifting up the fallen, cheering the disconsolate, giving 
permanence to order, energy to law, dignity to public 
sentiment, stability to government, value to property, 
morality and piety to the people. Let the ten mill- 
ions of Wesley's followers in this country, pious, cult- 
ured, wealthy, tell the benevolence of his life and 
character. 

Do you wish to push the contrast further ? I accept 
the challenge. What has infidelity done for the world ? 
Has it an object ? It is to destroy. It is nullification, 
repudiation, secession. It is the base attempt to throw 
off all obligation, to renounce all authority, contemn all 
law. Its advocates are called " freethinkers," who set 
themselves up as the infallible judges of truth, receiving 
only what they can comprehend, and only what suits 
their taste. Their standard of judgment, root and 
branch, fruit and flower, is supreme selfishness ; their 
pretended object is the rescue of mankind from the fear 



56 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

of error and the melancholy of superstition ; to deliver 
the world from the power of priestcraft, the burden of 
worship, and devotion paid to Jesus. This is a formida- 
ble pretence, but it is a pretence without a foundation. 
In Protestant Christianity the Christian is without fear, 
and free from melancholy ; his devotion is a delight, and 
piety is a sublime reality ; its ministers are learned and 
devout, while Christ is God over all, and blessed for- 
ever more. The infidel would pluck the crown from the 
Redeemer's brow, abolish the Sabbath, hush the chiming 
of the church-going bells, fire our sanctuaries, break 
down our altars, burn our Bibles, exile our pastors, over- 
throw civil government, abrogate the holy rite of mar- 
riage, annihilate the distinction between vice and virtue, 
open wide the floodgates of vice, plunge the world into 
the grave of despair, and consign humanity to the dun- 
geons of the damned. We have nothing to hope from 
infidelity, but everything to dread. 

But how divinely different is the object of Christian- 
ity ! She comes to us like a pleasant-formed angel with 
her lessons of wisdom, her calls to virtue, and her re- 
wards to piety. Like the king's daughter, all her gar- 
ments smell of myrrh ; like a beacon-light on some 
dangerous coast, she guides the mariner to a friendly 
port ; like a good Samaritan, she lifts the wounded of 
earth and bears them to the inns of salvation ; like the 
good physician, at her touch disease is dispelled and 
death paralyzed ; like the angel of plenty, from whose 
footfalls rise harvest-fields waving their golden grain, 
she is the giver of every good and perfect gift. She 
dissipates ignorance and enlightens the mind ; she abol- 
ishes violence and creates love ; she destroys sin and in- 
duces righteousness ; she mitigates sorrow and awakens 
joy ; she conquers death and opens heaven to the blest. 



GREAT CHRISTIANS VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 57 

What has infidelity accomplished for mankind ? What 
public virtue has it promoted ? What science or art has 
it originated ? What great charity lias it established ? 
What war has it averted ? What system of idolatry has 
it subverted ? How many slaves has it liberated ? How 
many inebriates has it reclaimed ? How many fallen 
women has it restored ? How many souls has it re- 
deemed ? Whose death-bed has it cheered ? Whose 
broken heart has it consoled ? 

I protest against infidelity, by the rosy hands of child- 
hood clasped in prayer morning and night ; by the ten- 
derness and purity of womanhood ; by the strength and 
aspirations of manhood. 

Is prayer a delusion ? I am content. Is the ministry 
of angels a fancy ? Let me believe they kiss my cheek, 
and fan my weary brow with their wings of strength. 
Is immortality a dream ? Let me dream on. Is Christ 
but human ? Let me pay Him the homage of a devout 
heart. Is heaven but an imagination ? Let me bathe 
my spirit in its glorious anticipations. Do I wander ? 
It is in fields of light. Do I go astray ? It is with the 
great and good of all ages. 

Do you ask me what Christianity has done for our 
race ? All the original discoveries in science, all the 
original inventions in art, are the work of Christian 
men. Infidels have made subordinate contributions 
thereunto, but they have not reached the grandeur of 
originality. Whatever is beneficent in every department 
of life may be traced directly to the great Christian mas- 
ters of thought, to the great Christian masters of revela- 
tion, to the great Christian masters of charity, among 
mankind. It was the Christian Telemachus who was 
instrumental in abolishing the gladiatorial combats in 
Rome. He entered the arena of the grand old Coli- 



58 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

seum, which stands to-day as a magnificent monument 
of his Christian heroism, and threw himself between the 
two combatants, and though he fell a martyr, yet the 
following day the emperor issued an edict forever abol- 
ishing gladiatorial combats in Rome. It was the Chris- 
tian Copernicus who gave us the true system of the stars. 
It was the Christian Gutenberg who gave to the world 
the art of printing, and the first book issued from the 
press was the Bible. It was the Christian Watt who 
gave to commerce steam as a motor power. It was the 
Christian Morse who gave us the telegraph, which has 
enabled us to transform land and sea into whispering 
galleries, so that thought is omnipresent. It was the 
Christian Howard who inaugurated organized charity. 
It was the Christian Wilberforce who abolished slavery 
in the British possessions, and after him the Christian 
Lincoln who abolished slavery in this country, and thus 
prepared the way for the other nations of Christendom 
to wipe out this inhuman curse from the escutcheon of 
national power and glory. 

Infidels, wave your banners, bring on your victors, 
recount your triumphs, and for every victory I will 
name a hundred ; for every infidel who has done any- 
thing for mankind, 1 will marshal a thousand Christian 
men and women from their thrones in glory, bearing 
their palms of victory. 

Who, then, would be an unbeliever, in the face of 
history, in the face of these tremendous facts, in the face 
of the immorality of these men who are held up to us as 
the pioneers and expounders of infidelity ? Who would 
not rather be associated with the great and good of all 
ages ? Who would not ascend on pinions of creative 
genius with such a poet as Milton, and sing with the 
morning stars ? Who would not soar with such a spirit 



GREAT CHRISTIAN VS. GREAT INFIDELS. 59 

as Sir Isaac K~ewton through the regions of everlasting 
light ? Who would not penetrate the inner arcana of the 
universe with Francis Bacon and behold the secrets of 
the cosmos as revealed by his wondrous intellect ? Who 
would not robe himself in the raiment of charity, and 
follow the footsteps of such a benefactor as Thomas 
Chalmers, going about doing good ? ISTay, who would 
not proudly claim companionship with William Wilber- 
force and Abraham Lincoln in striking off the last 
manacle from the forms of our fellow-beings who had 
been enslaved ? 



CHAPTER Y. 

THE ELEVATION OF WOMAK. 

How true and yet how strange it is that from time 
immemorial one half of the human race has been pro- 
scribed ; that woman, so essential to its perpetuity, has 
been burdened with civil, and, I may say, religious dis- 
abilities, and degraded by social customs. This fact is 
the result of prejudice, which may be traced to many 
sources. There is no other reasonable explanation of 
such an unfortunate condition of things. But as Chris- 
tianity becomes potential in the world, this prejudice 
gives way ; these legal, social, and religious disabilities 
are removed, and woman is rising: to her true intellectual 
and moral position in the world. This marvellous revo- 
lution has been wrought by and through the Bible. 

The Jewish is the only ancient religion that was op- 
posed to this proscription, and Christianity is the only 
modern religion that gives proper recognition to the 
rights of woman. The question therefore is, What has 
Christianity done for woman ? The assertion is boldly 
made by unbelievers that woman's high social position 
in this country is due to her freedom from religious 
restraint. Let us decide this question by an appeal to 
historic facts. Let us see what was the condition of 
woman under Roman law, under early Teutonic sway, 
and under the oldest and best religions of the East ; and 
then wherein has her condition been improved by Chris- 
tianity. 



THE ELEVATION OE WOMAN, 61 

Let us take woman under Eoman law. She had no 
voice in the government of the family. The father was 
the sole centre of authority. The children were not 
esteemed in the family of the mother, but in that of the 
father. The husband had supreme power over his wife's 
property. All that she had became his. By her mar- 
riage she lost all family rights, and could bequeath noth- 
ing to her own relatives. The Eoman law esteemed her 
as a sister to her own children, and the adopted daughter 
of her husband. She was not his equal. He had over 
her the power of life and death. When accused of cer- 
tain offences a court was convened, composed of her rela- 
tives, at which the husband presided, and which could 
inflict upon her the severest penalties. What was the 
reason for this degradation ? Gains said it was because 
of her " levity of mind." Cicero said it was because of 
her " infirmity of purpose." This is worse than non- 
sense ; it is a crime. For there is no proof that woman 
has less strength of purpose and less gravity of mind 
than man. 

Poets, orators, and satirists gave expression to the pro- 
found contempt of woman in her moral and intellectual 
aspect. Even the calm philosopher, Seneca, character- 
izes woman as a foolish, wild creature, incapable of self- 
control. 

Eoman marriage, in its consummation and in its disso- 
lution, illustrated woman's sad condition. She married 
a master who had over her absolute control. Against 
this absolute control there came a reaction in favor of 
woman, under the name of "free marriage," through 
which the wife held property, observed her family con- 
nections, and worshipped her own gods ; but this change 
led to the most appalling frequency of divorce. Noble- 
born women reckoned their years by the number of their 



62 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

husbands. Juvenal mentions a woman wlio had eight 
husbands in five years. Martial was provoked to say, 
" She who marries so often marries not at all." Tertul- 
lian represents divorce as the end of Roman marriage. 
Cicero repudiated his first wife Terentia to escape his 
creditors, by giving them the dower of his new wife, 
Publilia, whom he in turn repudiated. 

Such was the social and legal condition of woman 
under the most magnificent civilization outside of Christ- 
endom, under a national life which created that juris- 
prudence which Justinian embodied in his Pandects, and 
which underlies, in its general principles, the civilization 
of the world. In a country where law was the boast of 
the people and the admiration of mankind, we might 
reasonably look for such a protection of the rights of 
woman as to reflect glory upon the age. But in vain do 
we search the legal records of the " Mistress of the 
World " for such a fact. 

Now, what did Christianity do for woman through the 
modification of the Roman law ? As soon as the religion 
of our Lord gained control in that empire, it created a 
new conception of woman's true position. Recall the 
wonderful changes made under Constantine, in the 
fourth century, and under Justinian in the sixth. By 
those changes the husband's absolute power was broken, 
the tutelage of woman was abolished, and she had rights 
in property. This was the beginning of the personal 
independence of f worn an, which is the glory of modern 
law and custom, and which has culminated in our pres- 
ent legislation. 

To accomplish this Christianity had a desperate strug- 
gle. She had to contend against old customs and in- 
veterate habits, but she triumphed. How splendid are 
these words of Justinian: a Ve enact, then, that all 



THE ELEVATION OF WOMAN". 63 

persons, so far as they can, should preserve chastity, 
which alone is able to present their souls with confidence 
before God:" 

There were three powerful causes which operated to 
elevate woman under Christianity. She became a recog- 
nized factor in the Church ; she was among the most 
heroic of the blessed confessors wdio died at the stake, or 
in the arena of the Coliseum for the love of Christ ; and 
the discipline in the early Church not only protected the 
sanctity of marriage, but recognized woman as the equal 
of man. How many illustrious names appear in history 
reflecting the exalted character of woman under the dis- 
pensation of the New Testament ! It was Priscilla, more 
than any other human being, who laid the foundations 
of the Christian Church in Home ; and the magnificent 
basilica of St. Peter's, instead of being a monument to 
Julius II. and Leo X., or to Michael Angelo or Raphael, 
is the enduring monument of the Christian woman, 
Priscilla. And who does not remember Phoebe, that 
Grecian Christian lady w T ho was the despatch-bearer of 
the inspired Epistles by St. Paul to the churches of 
Greece? And who does not recall St. Helena, the 
mother of Constantine the Great, and her eminent de- 
votion to Christianity ? It is to the enduring honor of 
Constantine that when he came to the throne he restored 
his mother to public favor and power. Constantius, his 
father, had repudiated her for Theodora, but the restora- 
tion of St. Helena was the noble expression of filial love 
under the power of a new religion. And it should be 
remembered that it was St. Helena who made a journey 
to the Holy Land, and rescued the Cave of the Nativity, 
and over it placed the splendid basilica which remains to 
this day ; that it was St. Helena who discovered the 
supposed tomb of Christ in Jerusalem, and over it reared 



64 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

what is now known, and will be known in all the ages to 
come, as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. And who 
does not recall Paula, that Roman princess who accom- 
panied St. Jerome to Palestine and distributed her ample 
fortune in charities and devotions ? These are the 
jewels in the crown of our Lord. These are the proofs 
of what Christianity has done for woman. 

And what was the condition of woman under the old 
Teutonic tribes ? True, she was revered, she was 
esteemed a prophetess in times of national peril ; her 
virtue was estimated as priceless. The historian, Taci- 
tus, never wearies in pronouncing eulogies upon the 
many virtues of the German wife and mother. 

Yet it is an historic fact that among the Teutonic 
tribes polygamy was not unknown ; that the husband 
could be an absolute tyrant ; that he could put out the 
eyes and break the limbs of an unhappy wife. 

In Teutonic marriages the woman was purchased like 
any other piece of property. She was a maiden to her 
lord, sat at his feet during his meals, and was the slave 
of his whims. A Teutonic tutelage gave the husband 
the right to sell, to punish, and to kill the wife of his 
bosom. 

Happily for the world, Christianity permeated those 
Teutonic tribes before they were altogether corrupted 
by contact with the low Roman and Grecian civiliza- 
tions. The religion of our Lord preserved whatever was 
good and modified whatever was evil. It threw its 
muniments of power around woman's priceless virtue ; 
it preserved the reverence in which she had been held ; 
nor did it detract from the confidence which the public 
placed in her in times of great and impending peril. 
More than this : it substituted monogamy for polygamy ; 
it broke the absolute tyranny of the husband ; it rescued 



THE ELEVATIOX OF WOMAtf. 65 

woman from the public shambles and made her the equal 
and happy companion of her husband. And nowhere 
to-day outside of England is home such a sublime fact as 
in Germany. There and here the German husband and 
father is seen with the wife and mother and their chil- 
dren on all festive occasions. Do you tell me that with 
them he spends his time in beer -gardens ? It is true. 
But this is better than the custom in this country for the 
polished American to leave wife and children at home 
and spend his nights amid the conviviality and gambling 
of a club-house. 

And what is the condition of woman under the old 
religions of the East ? Let us go to Japan, China, and 
India. Let us take woman there in her best estate, 
under the great religious teachers whose names are so 
honored in this country by certain persons. The great 
Confucius considered a woman no better than a slave, 
and as difficult to manage. " Ten daughters do not 
equal one son," he said. Here are some of his maxims : 
" When young she must obey her father and elder 
brother ; when married she must obey her husband ; 
when a widow she must obey her son. She must not 
marry a second time. She must never issue orders to 
those outside of her home. Her chief business is to 
prepare wine and food. She must not be known for 
good or evil beyond the threshold of her own apart- 
ments. She must not attend a funeral beyond the limits 
of her own State. She must not come to any conclusion 
on her own deliberation. There are five women who 
should not be taken in marriage : the daughter of a 
rebel, the daughter of a disorderly father, the daughter 
of parents whose grandchildren are criminals, the daugh- 
ter of a leper, and a daughter who has lost her father 
and elder brother." 



66 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

Confucius gave these seven reasons to justify a man 
when he wanted to divorce his wife : "If she be child- 
less ; if she be unfaithful to her bridal vows ; if she be 
jealous of the clothes of other women or of her husband ; 
if she be dishonest ; if she be sickly ; if she disobey her 
mother-in-law ; if she talk too much. ' ' How is that for 
high civilization ? While in China you cannot buy a 
boy at any price, you can get a girl for a dime. The 
infanticide of girls in China and India is a common 
thing. In some provinces more than one third of the 
infant girls are annually murdered. 

The great Buddha was not more favorable to women. 
He taught the monstrous notion of the transmigration of 
souls, and the only hope for woman was that she might 
turn to be a man some time or other ; and the burden of 
the prayer of a Buddhistic woman is that she may be a 
man in the next world in good circumstances. 

Nor does the famous Brahmin do better for woman. 
She is not permitted to read the holy Veda nor to offer 
prayer. She is soulless without man. The Shastas 
teach : She must revere her husband as she would a 
god. When in his presence she must keep her eyes 
upon him to receive his commands. When he speaks 
she must be quiet. If she speaks unkindly to him she 
must be divorced without delay, and when he is dead she 
must burn on his funeral pyre. 

Nor did Mohammed hold woman in higher esteem. 
The Arabs say : "Women are the whips of the devil. 
Trust neither a king, nor a horse, nor a woman. " In 
the Koran it is taught : " Men shall have the pre-emi- 
nence above women." When a son is born to a Moslem 
his neighbors congratulate him, but when a daughter is 
born to him he goes into the bazaars to receive the con- 
dolence of his friends. 



THE ELEVATION OF WOMAK. 6? 

When a son is born, 

He sleeps on a bed, 

He is clothed in robes, 

He plays with gems, 

His cry is princely loud ; 

But when a daughter is born, 

She sleeps on the ground, 

She is clothed with a wrapper, 

She plays with a tile, 

She is incapable either of evil or good ; 

It is hers only to think of preparing wine and food, 

And not giving any occasion of grief to her parents. 

Now, by way of contrast, let us turn to the Bible. 
What is its idea of woman ? She is man's equal. Her 
creation is as honorable as that of man. She was made 
to be his companion. The Arabs have a legend that be- 
fore Eve's creation man was a perfect humanity, possess- 
ing strength, dignity, and courage, grace, gentleness, 
and beauty, but that after the mysterious rib was ex- 
tracted man lost the grace, the gentleness, and the 
beauty, so that a man without a wife is only half a man. 

In the Ten Commandments the Lord demands equal- 
ity : " Honor thy father and thy mother." All of the 
Mosaic laws were essentially protective of woman. As 
a legislator Moses had to contend against polygamy, both 
simultaneous and successive, against concubinage and 
easy divorce, which were only too common. Through- 
out the East this social disorder was universal. Hence 
the courage of his legislation. His laws of marriage 
were at once preventive and protective. The Jewish 
law followed the girl into her apprenticeship, when she 
was compelled to support an indigent father, and it pro- 
vided for her release at a given time, and protected her 
in her betrothal. It provided for the preservation of 
her family inheritance and the rights of her widowhood. 



68 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

And all the divorce laws enacted by Moses were in the 
interest of woman. 

And what is the New Testament idea of marriage ? 
It must be seriously considered. It must be loyally ob- 
served. It is a bond for life and death, which must 
be endured to sustain it. Purity and fidelity are de- 
manded of both parties, and its final dissolution is justi- 
fied by only one cause. 

And how sublime the moral courage displayed by 
Christ in His elevation of woman against the social 
prejudices of His age ! He recognized women among 
His followers. He made companions of them, as in 
Bethany. He treated them with tenderness and healed 
them with His power. He was brave enough to defend 
them against the assaults of their partners in crime. He 
remembered His mother when He was on the Cross. He 
sent a woman on the most important mission ever com- 
mitted to a human being — to proclaim His triumphant 
resurrection. He restored marriage to its original state 
of purity. He recalled the beginning, when the first 
marriage was celebrated amid the fragrant bowers of 
Eden by Jehovah, the great High Priest. He opposed 
both kinds of polygamy — simultaneous and progressive. 

He declared that marriage is a state rather than an act, 
an institution rather than a law. He said marriage is 
not a convenience, nor a business transaction, nor a per- 
sonal contract merely. He said it is not a civil rite, but 
a religious institution. He declared it was ordained by 
the Almighty ; hence neither an accident, nor a human 
device, nor a civil arrangement. He referred to the 
creation of the male and the female, to the equality of 
the sexes, to the care that childhood needed, and then 
threw around it the sanctity of religion. 

Marriage has a threefold design : companionship, 



THE ELEVATION OF WOMAN. 69 

multiplication, and happiness. Its purity is demanded 
by the divine law. The relations of husband and wife 
are prescribed by inspiration. The duties of parents and 
children are defined, and family worship is required. 
Hence marriage is not a civil rite. It should originate 
in the Church, and be dissolved, if dissolved at all, by 
the State. All honor to the State of New York for her 
marriage laws ; but New York has erred in one thing : 
in the celebration of marriage by those other than the 
ministers of religion. An eminent lawyer of my con- 
gregation has been gracious enough to furnish me a 
transcript of the laws of our State touching these points : 

" For the purpose of being registered and authenticated ac- 
cording to the provisions of the title, marriages shall be solem- 
nized only by the following persons : 

" 1. Ministers of the gospel and priests of every denomination. 

" 2. Judges of the county courts and justices of the peace. 

" 3. The mayor, recorders, and aldermen of cities." 

Think of the solemnization of marriage by a New 
York alderman — by one w T hose brogue is still upon his 
lips ; a New York alderman, whose shillalah is his 
crosier, solemnizing the holy rites of marriage ! 

St. Paul has been violently assailed because of his sup- 
posed degradation of woman. But woman has never 
had a truer and a nobler defender of her rights than he. 
In the fifth chapter of Ephesians he discourses at length 
upon the mutual and reciprocal duties of husband and 
wife : " Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also 
loved the Church, and gave Himself for it." " Wives, 
submit yourselves unto your husb.nds, as unto the 
Lord." " So ought men to love their wives as their 
own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself, for 
no man ever hated his own flesh, but honoreth and cher- 



70 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

isheth it, even as the Lord the Church. ' ' There is an 
apparent harshness in the difference of these commands ; 
yet the woman's task is easier than the man's, and 
withal carefully guarded, It is eminently proper that 
there should be one ruling will in a family, which by 
ulivine appointment is man's. Of old it was said : 
" Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule 
over thee." But this submission is not a cringing servi- 
tude, a servile obedience to a lordly husband ; but a 
recognition of his headship of the family, a gentle 
acquiescence in his decisions, a calm and dignified re- 
spect paid him who bears the image of God and whose 
representative he is. In this the Bible goes on the sup- 
position of what man should be, and not what he is ; and 
were he as he should be no pure and noble-minded 
woman would hesitate to render him this respect. But 
lest he should prove a tyrant she is to submit as unto the 
Lord, that is according to His law. Yet there is a limit 
to man's authority. He cannot compel her to do wrong. 
He may be profligate, but he cannot compel her to fol- 
low his example. He may be an infidel, but he cannot 
compel her to deny the Lord. He is bound to respect 
her rights of conscience and her feelings. He cannot 
compel her to neglect her filial duties, nor to disregard 
her own happiness. These are her reserved rights, not 
surrendered by the marriage contract. And what are 
the corresponding duties of the husband ? " Husbands, 
love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church 
and gave himself for it." This is all that woman's heart 
can wish. Love implies two things : to take delight in 
a person, and to render that person happy. And how 
much should a husband love his wife ? " As Christ loved 
the Church, and gave Hirnself for it." The husband is 
to sacrifice himself for his wife if necessary. 



THE ELEVATION OF WOMAN. 71 

Such is the noble exhibition of the relative duties of 
husband and wife by St. Paul. 

Our Lord pronounced judgment upon the social and 
domestic vices of His age, and sought the elevation of 
woman by declaring the indissolubleness of the marriage 
tie except for one cause. He did not recognize incom- 
patibility of temper, or insanity, or fickleness of choice, 
as justifiable causes of divorce. He knew the necessity 
of giving permanence to marriage. He knew that other 
causes might justify a separation, as where the husband 
is brutal, or intemperate, or fails to support his family ; 
but He does not give the right to remarry. And how 
essential and grand this truth ! If marriage is not per- 
manent, what will be the effect upon the childhood of 
the Republic ? If marriage is a mere contract, to be 
dissolved at the pleasure of the parties, then farewell to 
home ! It was Judge Story, that eminent jurist, who 
said, u Marriage appears to be something more than a 
mere contract. It is rather to be deemed an institution 
of society, founded upon the consent and contract of the 
parties ; and in this view it has some peculiarities in its 
nature, character, operation, and extent of obligation, 
different from what belongs to ordinary contracts." 
The reason that would justify the dissolution of marriage 
at the will of the parties would also justify the violation 
of all other obligations. Here is the greatest danger to 
society. 

Two things are needed in this country — namely, the 
enactment of a national marriage law and of a national 
law of divorce. The laws on these questions should be 
not diverse and local, but uniform and universal. Give 
us these and we will rescue home from the danger that 
now threatens it. Let us see to it that this subject is 
taken into consideration by the chief legislative body of 



72 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

this country ; for while hitherto the States have claimed 
as reserved rights the right to legislate on marriage and 
on divorce, it appears to me that these questions are 
radical in the welfare of the Republic, and that they 
rightfully belong to national legislation. And there is 
another thing that is imperatively demanded by the 
sanctity and permanence of marriage — namely, that the 
Territorial Government of Utah shall be abolished, and 
the administration of the affairs of that Territory placed 
under the direct control of the General Government, 
with, authority in the President to appoint the officers, 
as is the case in the District of Columbia. The next 
bloody battle that will be fought in this country will be 
fought west of the Missouri River, with those fanatical, 
deluded foreigners who have no love for our institutions, 
when they become strong enough in numbers and in 
military power to again defy the Government of the 
United States. Let us take time by the forelock, crush 
out this iniquity, and obliterate this stain from the 
escutcheon of the Republic. 

The American woman nearly occupies the position 
which Christianity seems to assign her. Her individ- 
uality is a recognized fact. She is a leader in all the 
great moral reforms of the day. She is the equal of 
man in personal rights. She has opportunities for de- 
velopment to qualify herself for all honorable positions. 

Woman should be a Christian. All her influence 
should be on the side of Christ. The great struggle of 
Christianity has been to rescue her from her degrada- 
tion, and to elevate her to her true position ; and it 
would only be gratitude on her part to accept the Lord 
as her personal Redeemer. 



CHAPTEE VI. 

HOME LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC. 

There are three immutable things in this world — 
the Family, the Church and the State. Older than the 
Apostles, older than the Prophets, older than the Patri- 
archs is the family. Its divine origin is coeval with the 
race. It goes back to the beginning, when the first 
marriage ceremony was performed by the Almighty, the 
Great High Priest, amid the fragrant flowers of Eden. 
It was the crowning act of creation. It has descended 
to us through all the ages ; it has existed in all nations, 
under all phases of civilization ; it is the glory of Chris- 
tendom, and the inspiration of humanity universal. 

The divine division of the human race is not into indi- 
viduals, but into families. The inspired genealogies are 
records of separate households, in each of which was 
named the first-born son ; and so St. Luke has traced the 
genealogy of Christ from Joseph to Adam, and from 
Adam to God. 

Pale}- has well said that " in the family are the rudi- 
ments of an empire." Had he been a republican, he 
would have said that " in the family are the rudiments 
of a republic." By divine appointment the father was 
the head of the family, the priest of the household. As 
the descendants of Adam multiplied, and the number of 
families increased, they assembled together as a people 
and offered their devotions to the living God. This was 
the origin of the Church. The right to rule and the 



74 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

duty to obey were inherent in the household, and for 
purposes of protection these two fundamental principles 
of government were in due time transferred to the ag- 
gregation of families, which form the State. As the 
Creator is more than the creature, the fountain more 
than the stream, the seed more than the plant, so the 
family is more than the Church, and more than the 
State. For these flow out of the family ; and when the 
Church is scattered, when the State is dissolved, the 
family will remain — the unbroken bond of humanity, 
the enduring memorial of Eden. 

What is home in its manifold relations ? In its sim- 
plest sense, home is a place of abode. As such, it may 
be a place adorned with all the elegance that art can 
create, and all the luxury which wealth can procure ; 
where the walls are adorned with pictures from the pen- 
cils of the old masters, and the niches are filled, and the 
pedestals crowned, by the mute but elegant marbles from 
the chisels of famous sculptors ; where by day the light 
streams through curtains of rarest lace, and by night 
falls softly from golden chandeliers ; where fountains 
send up their sparkling waters, and murmur their 
perennial music ; where plants from every clime fill the 
conservatory with their beauty and fragrance ; where 
birds from the tropics delight the eye with their gor- 
geous plumage, and enchant the ear with their ravishing 
song ; and where the fruits of every zone, and the deli- 
cacies of each revolving season, tempt the appetite and 
delight the taste. 

Or, home may be a place where happiness waits on 
honest industry ; where comfort springs from compe- 
tency rather than from affluence and luxury ; where 
father and mother are the trees of the family garden, 
and merry children are the birds that sweetly sing in the 



HOME LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC. 75 

branches thereof ; where there are no sudden transitions 
from wealth to poverty or from poverty to wealth, but 
where the intelligent, industrious classes, which con- 
stitute the bone and sinew of the Republic, the support 
and strength of Church and State, have their abode ; 
where the Bible spreads its banquet of wisdom and love, 
where prayer pours the desires and aspirations of the 
heart into the ear of the Eternal, and where praise wafts 
on high the gratitude of the soul ; where tranquillity 
abides, where contentment dwells, and where love reigns 
supreme. 

Or, home may be a place where wretchedness and 
want hold their ghastly revels ; where bare floors, broken 
furniture, scanty fare, hard beds, and tattered garments 
are the symbols of distress ; where the face never smiles 
but in the idiotic laugh of the drunken carousal ; where 
love is consumed by perpetual hate ; where parents are 
living examples of total depravity, and their children, 
born in sin and cradled in crime, are brought up for hell. 

To one or other of these homes all men belong. As 
we stand in the marts of commerce, or in the great thor- 
oughfares of the metropolis, and behold the surging tide 
of humanity as it rolls along its daily channels, we are 
startled with the thought that all these retire at night to 
one or other of those three homes ; and then we have a 
sleeping city. What is more impressive than a sleeping 
city — where eyes and ears are closed, and lips are silent '{ 
— that strange symbol of death, a sleeping city ! And 
with the morning comes the waking, and the multitude 
issues forth to its daily round of activity, the embodi- 
ment of the abode, to vitalize and ennoble, or to vitiate 
and disgrace society. Who can contemplate these facts 
without realizing that home is the most powerful factor 
in our civilized life ? 



76 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

Home is also the scene of the dearest ties of earth. It 
is the scene of wedded love — that new-born love which 
is more than the love of David and Jonathan, more than 
the love of Damon and Pythias — wherein two bodies, two 
souls, and two lives are blended into one ; wherein a new 
affection has been created by mutual choice and mutual 
preference, and around which revolve the most beautiful 
relations of humanity. The great fundamental principle 
of our religious faith is love ; and is there on earth any 
scene more expressive of that essential principle than the 
ceremony at the marriage altar ? For a woman — young, 
tender, beautiful, buoyant with bright anticipations of 
the future — to leave father and mother and give her 
body, her soul, and her life to the one man of her choice 
— this is love's sweet surrender. For a man — strong, 
brave, noble, full of high resolve and great endeavor — to 
link his destiny with that of the one woman of his choice 
— this is love's precious victory. And for these two to 
take each other, for better or worse, in sickness or 
health, in poverty or wealth, in honor or reproach, to 
the exclusion of all others, the fortunes of the one to be 
those of the other, even until death — this is love's blessed 
union. It is not the love of parent and child, but the 
love of husband and wife, that symbolizes the mutual 
and reciprocal affection between Christ and His Church. 

Around this oldest of human institutions God has 
thrown the most solemn and impressive sanctions. 
Home is not only the scene of wedded love, but also the 
scene of mutual and reciprocal relations. And what are 
these relations — what are the obligations, the rights and 
the muniments of marriage ? 

The obligations are threefold : Voluntary, Monog- 
amous, and Indissoluble. 

The first of these obligations springs from choice. 



HOME LIFE OE THE REPUBLIC. 77 

There should be no coercion, but always a calm, intelli- 
gent, deliberate choice, not instigated by passion, not 
created by love of position, not induced by a desire for 
wealth, but rather a deliberate preference on the part of 
each, and the mutual acceptance of each other. And 
therefore as a minister of religion 1 declare that love 
must be the inspiration of the choice ; and while par- 
ents should always have due regard to the social circle 
into which their son or daughter ought to marry, yet 
the social position should be held subordinate to the 
supreme object of marriage — namely, the union of two 
wedded hearts. Romance, as well as history, is full of 
those terrible marriages wherein coercion has played the 
most important part, wherein love has been subordinated 
to the lucre that perishes, to the passion that consumes, 
to the honors that fade away ; and she must be an insane 
mother who will lead to the bridal altar a daughter who 
is young, tender, innocent, unsuspecting, and unite her 
to some old rotten carcass of a man simply because he 
has wealth and social position. 

The second of these obligations is monogamous — the 
union of two persons to the exclusion of the third. 
" Let every man have his own wife and every woman 
her own husband. 55 A third party is not to be consid- 
ered for a moment. There is to be no rival in any sense 
to share the affection of the man or the woman. He is 
to be supreme in her heart ; she is to*be supreme in his. 
There can be no third party without hell ensuing. And 
those citizens of this great metropolis who think that they 
can have a second establishment, and that in secret, and 
at the same time maintain the purity of wedded love, the 
integrity and dignity of married life, will come at last to 
the realization of the fact that they have sown to the 
wind and reaped the whirlwind. If there is anything 



78 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

that should be denounced from the pulpit in plain, un- 
equivocal, and withering language, it is this presumption 
on the part of men who have risen to affluence that they 
can trample upon the sacred rights of marriage by dupli- 
cating their domestic relations, which is a crime against 
the theory of marriage, a crime against wife and chil- 
dren. Such a man should be reprobated, repudiated, ex- 
orcised. As Jesus Christ cast out the devils of old, so 
such a man should be cast out of decent society. 

The third of these obligations is that the union is 
indissoluble. It is a union for life. " Until death doth 
us part" is the solemn vow taken by those who stand at 
the marriage altar. " What God hath joined together, 
let no man put asunder." There is but one cause that 
will justify the breaking of the bond of marriage with 
the right to remarry ; and he who dissolves the bond of 
matrimony and remarries without that justifying cause 
is a criminal before God and society. There may be 
justifiable separation for other causes, but not the right 
to remarry. 

And now, from the obligations let us turn to the 
rights. What are the rights flowing out of this fountain 
of human love ? They are threefold — namely, Author- 
ity, Protection, and Reciprocity. 

The question of inferiority does not inhere in the 
command of submission of the wife to the husband, but 
rather it is a question of authority. Our rulers are not 
necessarily our superiors. Under our form of govern- 
ment every man is equal to every other man before the 
law. We are all peers of the realm. But for the pur- 
poses of government it is necessary that authority should 
be vested somewhere. Hence certain citizens, our 
rulers, are invested with authority. So, for reasons best 
known to Himself, God has made the husband the depos- 



HOME LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC. 70 

itary of domestic authority. But this authority does not 
imply the right to arbitrarily command the wife to do 
this or that. Rather, it relates to the support, happi- 
ness, and general control of the household. There should 
be no assumption of superiority on the part of the hus- 
band. The sacred writers do not assert that the husband 
is the superior of the wife. In acknowledging him as 
the head of the household she does not surrender her 
equality. Neither is the superior of the other ; the 
question of equality is not mooted ; but authority and 
obedience are beautifully blended, in harmony with the 
design of the Almighty. 

While the husband is invested with this authority, the 
wife is entitled to protection. He is to be her defender, 
the defender of her life, her health, her reputation, and 
her family. He is to be her provider, the provider of 
her home, her food, her raiment, and whatever will ren- 
der her happy in her person and happy in her home-life. 
But, sad to say, sometimes this natural relation is 
reversed. I have seen a tree, once majestic, but now 
decayed, rotten to the core, ready to fall, a melancholy 
shadow, as it were, of its former strength, and yet I 
have seen the ivy cling to it, and cover its hollow, rotten 
sides, as though its strength and growth were unim- 
paired. So it has been the sad but beautiful mission of 
some wives to cling to degenerated husbands to the last. 
And if there is heroism outside of heaven, if there is 
well-won eulogy to be pronounced on earth, it belongs 
to that self-sacrificing, self-abnegating woman who 
clings, as a faithful wife, to that rotten, disgraceful hus- 
band who has outraged all the noble attributes of man- 
hood. 

The third of these rights is reciprocity. There is to 
be a body for a body, a soul for a soul, a life for a life ; 



80 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

there is to be mutual and reciprocal relations, in every 
particular, in the highest degree and to the last ex- 
tremity. 

And what are the muniments which the Almighty has 
thrown around this venerable institution ? Its inno- 
cency, its honorableness, and the sanctions of law. All 
those who hie themselves to nunneries and monasteries, 
looking upon marriage as unworthy of their piety, forget 
what a terrible and unwarranted reflection they are cast- 
ing upon the first institution created by the Almighty, 
which comes down to us venerable with time and sur- 
rounded with the sanction of the Creator. So, around 
this blessed institution are the sanctions of divine law, 
prescribing its duties, defining its relations, and offering 
promises which are the inspiration of those who enter 
the holy estate of wedded love. 

Home is not only the place of abode, but it is the 
school of childhood. It is the model-room of life. 
Time with its cares may crowd out of our daily life the 
memories of childhood, yet its impressions will abide. 
Geologists can take us to sandstone formations reaching 
backward into the incalculable past, and there show us on 
what was once the bed of an ocean the marks of a ripple, 
the memorial of some small wave, and the marks of the 
rain-drop that fell on those plastic shores, and which the 
sun and the wind have perpetuated for our eyes to 
behold. So the ripples and rain-drops of tender child- 
hood remain on the seashore of our life. It is a grand 
thought that the majority of Christians are from Chris- 
tian homes. It is not true that the children of religious 
parents are worse than those of the irreligious. It were 
in flat contradiction of the laws of human nature, it 
would confound all the laws of psychology, were it so. 
And that old slander that the parson's children are the 



HOME LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC. 81 

worst in the parish is not a fact, as is proved by authen- 
tic statistics. 

The history of great men is the history of great 
mothers. Byron's mother was proud, ill-tempered, and 
violent ; behold her son ! Napoleon's mother was beau- 
tiful, energetic, and ambitious ; and her son said of her, 
i i It was my mother who first inspired me with a desire 
to be great." Sir Walter Scott's mother was a lover of 
poetry and painting ; no marvel that her son is the 
greatest of Scotia's bards. Patrick Henry's mother was 
remarkable for her conversational powers ; and her son is 
the American Demosthenes. Washington's mother was 
pure, true and pious ; and her illustrious son exemplifies 
her virtues. John Quincy Adams's mother was distin- 
guished for intelligence and piety ; and her son said, " I 
owe all that I am to my mother. ' ' The mother of John 
Wesley was extraordinary for her intellectuality, piety, 
and executive ability; and she is justly called " the 
mother of Methodism." Benjamin West, that distin- 
guished artist, ascribed his renown to a mother's kiss. 
When a youth he sketched his baby sister asleep in her 
cradle. In that rough outline his mother saw the evi- 
dence of genius, and in her maternal pride she kissed her 
son. In after life West was wont to say, " That kiss 
made me an artist." A mother's impressions have a 
resurrection in second childhood. Doctor Nott, so long 
president of Union College, relapsed into second child- 
hood, and when restless he was easily quieted to sleep by 
Watts's cradle hymn, 

" Hush my babe, lie still and slumber.' ' 

The last time he conducted family worship he forgot 
himself, and concluded with the well-known lines begin- 
ning, 



82 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

il Now I lay me down to sleep." 

I do not wonder that Eobert Hall said, " The family is 
the seminary of the social affections and the cradle of 
sensibility, where the first elements are acquired of that 
tenderness and humanity which cement mankind to- 
gether, and were they entirely extinguished the whole 
fabric of social institutions would be dissolved." 

From Christian homes come forth the saints of the 
Church. Recall Samuel and Jeremiah, and John the 
Baptist, who were sanctified from their birth. Good 
King Josiah knew the Lord w^hen but eight years old. 
Timothy knew the Scriptures from a child. Polycarp 
died at the age of ninety-five, and had served the Lord 
eighty-six years ; hence he was but nine when con- 
verted. Baxter embraced the Saviour when a youth, 
Jonathan Edwards at the age of seven, Isaac Watts at 
nine, Matthew Henry at eleven, and Robert Hall at 
twelve. 

I do not wonder that the famous statesmen of all 
nations, as Draco, and Lycurgus, and Solon, and Napo- 
leon, and Washington, gave attention to childhood. How 
precious the influence of mother ! There is no velvet so 
soft as a mother's lap, no rose so sweet as a mother's 
cheek, no music so charming as a mother's voice. 

What are the duties that we owe to our home life ? 
They are three : Amiability, Contentment, and Devotion. 

Society is a masquerade. Few persons appear abroad 
as they appear in the bosom of m their family. When in 
society, the best of us are conscious of restraint ; we 
measure our words and guard our actions. The proud 
assume an air of humility ; the ambitious appear content ; 
the passionate seem calm ; the petulant, patient ; the 
selfish, liberal ; the austere, gentle and yielding. We 



HOME LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC. 83 

do this from a desire for the good opinions of others. 
There is a restraining inspiration which springs from the 
presence of society. But amid the impenetrable secrecy 
of the household the maskers lay aside their disguise. 
There the "holy are holy, and the filthy are filthy." 
There nature is seen as it is. The motive to disguise has 
ceased to operate. The polished man in society is at 
home the uncouth husband and rough father. The sweet 
and elegant lady in company is the brawling wife and the 
scolding mother in the midst of her family. The amiable 
brother and gentle sister abroad are disagreeable and 
unkind to each other in the family circle. 

But there are those who appear best at home. Care- 
less about the empty plaudits of others, they are happiest 
when surrounded with the loved ones at home. There 
they shine as stars of the first magnitude, while in pro- 
miscuous assemblies their steady light is lost in the daz- 
zle of fashion, or obscured by the mist of the unnatural 
excitement of others. 

The family is the best place on earth for a man to sit 
in judgment on himself. It is next to the bar of God. 
There he sees himself as he will appear at the last day. 
We form false judgments of our character outside. Our 
friends flatter us ; they tell us we are beautiful ; that 
we are amiable, and kind, and gentle, and loving. But 
it is false, and no one knows its falsity better than our- 
selves. It is, therefore, in the household where the 
judgment of the last day begins, and we are in the pres- 
ence of the invisible Judge. 

Religion enables us to display the best traits of char- 
acter amid the sanctities of the family. Some persons 
choose home to give vent to their spleen and to manifest 
their discontent, Rather do so where no one thinks 
enough of you to feel badly about it. If you have to 



84 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

thunder, do it away from the homestead ; but when you 
enter the dear old house, have a calm there like the calm 
of heaven. Remember there is one at home that can be 
made to suffer as no one else in this wide world. If you 
have but one smile, save it for your wife. Every man 
should look well to the place of his death. He should 
be surrounded in his dying hours with associations that 
will recall the most pleasant recollections. 

Next to amiability comes contentment. "What a world 
of meaning there is in that old song, 

" Home, home — sweet, sweet home ! 
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." 

Doubtless society has its claims upon us, and common 
courtesy requires that we should exchange the ordinary 
civilities of life and mingle socially with our friends. 
There are outside amusements, refined and intelligent, 
which we may enjoy. But there are no enjoyments on 
earth which should be preferred exclusively to those of 
home. What a sham life is that where the domestic cir- 
cle is nightly abandoned for places of popular amuse- 
ment ! 

To make home attractive is the highest triumph of 
woman. What woman is there who would not prefer 
the honor of Washington's mother to the glory of Queen 
Elizabeth ? She is to render home happy by physical 
comforts and by books, by music, by flowers, by delight- 
ful conversation, by the sweetness of her spirit and the 
gentleness of her deportment. Here is the true sphere 
of woman's influence. Not on thrones, not in legisla- 
tive halls, not in short clothes, but at home. The guar- 
dian of infancy, the instructor of childhood, the com- 
panion of youth, the partner of manhood, the comforter 
of old age, is woman. Here let her diminish sorrow by 



HOME LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC. 85 

her sympathy, heighten joy by her gayety, soothe by her 
tenderness, dignify by her intelligence, and elevate by 
her devotion. This is woman's part ; it is man's to 
seek his highest happiness in such a home. And every 
true man would be proud of such a home, and with 
Goldsmith sing : 

" In all my wanderings round this world of care, 
In all my griefs — and God has given my share — 
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, 
Amid these humble bowers to lay me down ; 
To husband out life's taper at the close, 
And keep the flame from wasting, by repose ; 
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 
Amid the swains to show my book-learned skill, 
Around my fire an evening-group to draw, 
And tell of all I felt and all I saw ; 
And, as a hare, whom hound and horns pursue, 
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, 
I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 
Here to return — and die at home at last." 

And home should be made intensely religious. You 
may display the best traits of character in the family ; 
you may be content with the refined and less excitable 
enjoyments of the household ; yet without religion the 
family will be as a splendidly furnished parlor on a mid- 
winter's day, without a fire to cheer and comfort. 

Family religion consists of two elements — the pervad- 
ing spirit and the offering of devotion. The difference 
between the one and the other is too marked. There is 
such a difference between the prayers of acts and the 
prayers of lips. We should learn to distinguish devotion 
and godliness. The proud Pharisee offered his devotions, 
but had not godliness enough to justify him at home. 
The dominant spirit in the family circle should be re- 
ligion ; nor should it be antagonized by the love of 



86 CHKISTIAK1TY TRIUMPHANT. 

wealth, or of display, by a desire to outdo, to outdress, 
to outshine others. 

It is a great mistake to suppose that the prayers you 
offer morning and evening around your family altar 
make up family religion. Let us look to the influence 
that shall permeate and refine every temper, that shall 
give a holy fervency to every word that is uttered. And 
yet I do not intend to ignore family devotion ; 1 intend 
to insist upon it. Alas for the house in which no prayer 
is heard ; where the blessings of a kind Providence are 
bestowed, where the benedictions of the Almighty are 
showered upon the right hand and upon the left, and yet 
no voice of gratitude ascends to Him for these blessings ! 
It seems to me that these unsheltered houses are like 
those of the Egyptians when the Israelites were about 
to be delivered. You remember the angel passed 
through Egypt, and whenever he came to a house on the 
door-post of which was the blood of the paschal lamb, 
the angel passed by, but when he came to a house not 
marked with the saving blood, the first-born of that 
house was slain. If the destroying angel should pass 
through our great city, how many families would be 
found unsheltered by prayer ? 

Family devotion flows, from necessity, out of the very 
constitution of the household. God is the author and 
sustainer of the family, the proprietor and benefactor 
thereof. Therefore His existence should be recognized 
and His goodness acknowledged in the family. The 
Bible is full of impressive examples. Jehovah revealed 
His secret touching the destruction of Sodom to Abra- 
ham, to whom He paid the compliment, " I know him, 
that he will command his children and his household 
after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do 
justice and judgment." Thrice each day Daniel offered 



HOME LIFE OF THE REPUBLIC. 87 

prayer in his own house in the city of Babylon. Paul 
said of Timothy, " From a youth thou hast known the 
Scriptures." And of Cornelius, the centurion, it is said 
that he " feared God with all his house." 

How restraining are the gracious influences of family 
religion upon parents and children, and how precious 
these influences will be in the years to come ! " Thy 
children shall rise up and call thee blessed." Do you 
say there is no positive command for family prayer ? Is 
there a positive command to eat, or to take medicine, or 
to build churches, or that woman should commune and 
be baptized ? Do you plead inability ? Do you com- 
plain of press of other duties ? Is your plea the* want of 
confidence 1 Better by far so live that your children 
shall rise up and call you blessed. 



CHAPTER VII. 



IMPURE LITERATURE 



Christianity is the guardian of childhood. Youth is 
the chosen time to seek the Lord. " Remember now 
thy Creator in the days of thy youth," " Train up a 
child in the way he should go," is the voice from the 
Old dispensation ; and the voice from the New dispen- 
sation is, "Ye fathers, provoke not your children, to 
wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition 
of the Lord." The most beautiful act in the life of 
Christ is when He took young children in His arms and 
blessed them. And why all this tender interest in 
childhood ? As is the child, so will be the man. How 
vast the possibilities of childhood ! In Rome there are 
two pictures painted by the same artist and representing 
the same person. One is the delineation of innocence, 
and the other that of guilt. The artist had seen a little 
child in all the beauty of pristine purity, and drew its 
charming features on the canvas. Years afterward in 
the streets of Rome he beheld a man with dishevelled 
hair and haggard countenance and tattered garments — 
the impersonation of crime. That man was once that 
lovely child. One of our saddest reflections is that all 
the criminals in our penitentiaries, all the Magdalens who 
have gone astray from the paths of virtue, were once in- 
nocent and beautiful children on the bosom of maternity. 
And it is among our most joyous reflections that all the 
men and women who have risen to distinction, who fill 



IMPURE LITERATURE. 89 

positions of trust and honor, who are ornaments in 
society and pillars in the Church of God, were once little 
children. Hence, who can wonder that so much of Holy 
Scripture is devoted to the proper training and develop- 
ment of the childhood of our race ? 

What are some of the weighty reasons why due atten- 
tion should be given to the books our children read ? 

The young mind is on the alert to know, for its sur- 
roundings are new and novel. All that is familiar and 
old to us, is new and strange to children. The little 
child is a traveller in a new world. Some of you can 
recall the first time you visited foreign lands. What 
curiosity was excited ! How novel everything appeared ! 
How many were the questions you asked ! To the citi- 
zens of those distant lands, who had grown familiar with 
the scenes surrounding them, they had little or no 
novelty ; but to you, as a stranger and a traveller, every 
palace, and venerable church, and sacred shrine, and 
moss-clad tower, and famous battle-field, and scene of 
some wondrous deed that illuminates the page of history, 
was full of novelty and interest. 

In this respect the child is not unlike yourself. The 
world of nature, familiar to you, is strange to the child, 
and excites its curiosity and wonder. The sun, that has 
shed its golden light upon our earth for sixty centuries ; 
the moon, that has silvered earth and ocean since the 
Creation ; the stars, that have jewelled the firmament 
since long before the wise men followed the Star of 
Bethlehem ; the thunder, and the lightning, and the 
tornado, and the beautiful rainbow — these are among 
the many things in nature with which we are familiar, 
but which are new and marvellous to childhood. The 
prayer of childhood is, " Tell me a story.'' This infant 
appeal is not so much for amusement as for information ; 



90 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

for the young mind, is hungry to know, and finds pleas- 
ure in knowledge. 

Mind must have material for thought. Both body 
and mind have growth. Food and knowledge are anal- 
ogous ; food for the body, thought for the mind. As 
the body would perish without nourishment, so the mind 
would languish without intelligence. Mind is a field, 
wherein will grow either weeds or grains. Mind is a 
studio, wherein will be found forms of beauty or ob- 
jects of deformity. Mind is a builder, and the habita- 
tion that it rears will be either a palace or a hovel. 
What the mulberry -leaves are to the silkworm, which 
feeds upon them, so is thought to the mind. Mind 
must have thought, whether good or bad. The com- 
panionship of thought is as real as the companionship 
of men. Should we exercise care in the choice of those 
with whom we associate, because of their influence in 
moulding our characters and guiding our destiny ? So 
we should watch over the character of the thoughts 
with which we hold constant communion. 

There are three sources of thought — namely, Obser- 
vation, Reflection, and Communication. The last 
should be subdivided into Conversation and Books. 
Our first mental impressions are received through the 
senses — through eye, and ear, and -lip, and nerve. Out 
of these impressions the imagination weaves new forms 
of mental being, and by its magic power of combina- 
tion it creates the new out of the old. The furniture 
of the mind comes largely from conversation, but books 
are the material for reflection. They stimulate thought. 
Thought is the parent of power. It moulds the man, 
and gives direction to his life. It has the sweep and 
sway of power that belongs neither to the sword nor to 
the sceptre. Take two great contemporarieSj one a 



IMPURE LITERATURE. 91 

philosopher and the other a warrior, one the master and 
the other the pupil ; and behold the difference ! Alex- 
ander the Great carried his victorious banner to the very 
banks of the Indus, but his empire has faded from the 
vision of mankind. Aristotle carried his victorious 
banner into all the realms of knowledge, and to-day he 
sways his mental sceptre over the opinions of the civil- 
ized world. 

What shall the thought of childhood be ? What shall 
the books of childhood be ? There is intimate compan- 
ionship in books. Show me a man's books, and I will 
show you the man himself. 

And what is the relative effect of good and of bad 
books upon their respective readers ? Take the criminal 
classes of our great city, especially those between the 
ages of seven and twenty, and you will find that the 
majority of them have been under the influence of im- 
pure literature. Out of 3813 inmates of our Houses of 
Refuge, between the ages of sixteen and seventeen, 
nearly all who could read were readers of dime novels. 
Seven eighths of all the inmates of our Juvenile Asy- 
lum were under the same baneful influence. Jesse 
Pomeroy confessed that, before he committed his hor- 
rid crime, he had read not less than sixty dime novels. 
Who was not lately startled by the story of the son of a 
Mississippi judge who was found guilty of murder ? In 
his sunny South, amid his beautiful savannahs, he had 
read the stories of criminal adventures, and his parents 
had not disapproved of this kind of literature. He was 
thrilled with a desire for freedom ; he fled from the 
parental roof ; he plunged into Mexico ; he returned to 
Texas, and thence to New England, where the once inno- 
cent, manly, and fascinating youth, corrupted by impure 
fiction, committed the greatest crime known to the law. 



92 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 



The New York Sun of November 12th, 1883, pnb- 



lished the following : 

HE READ DIME NOVELS, 

AND ORGANIZED A SOCIETY THAT ISSUED DEATH-WARRANTS TO 

ITS ENEMIES. 

Cleveland, November 11. — Bertie Gaylord, aged fourteen 
years, is missing from his home in this city. His parents live in 
Arlington Street, an aristocratic quarter. The lad disappeared a 
week ago, taking with him two revolvers. His departure was the 
direct result of reading cheap literature. An examination of the 
papers left behind him shows that about four weeks ago he organ- 
ized a secret society called the " Society of the Silver Skulls." 
It had a membership of about ten boys, whose ages ranged from 
eleven to fifteen years. Their meetings and initiatory ceremonies 
were held in a barn on Arlington Street. The following is the 
oath each candidate had to take before he became a member. It 
is in the handwriting of young Gaylord : 

. " Cursed be friendship. Cursed be fathers, mothers, sisters, 
brothers. May the offspring of ourselves canker, blister, and 
decay upon its dying mother's breast ; may the blood of each 
breed pestiferous plagues ; may the hair of each fall from his 
head, the teeth crumble in his jaws, the brain rot in his skull, the 
eyes canker and fall from their sockets, and the fingers grow 
palsied if we ever betray the secrets of the Skulls. So do you 
swear. Death to our enemies. Life to the Skulls." 

Jason Caskey is a young lad who in some way incurred the dis- 
pleasure of u The Skulls." Two weeks ago his death-warrant 
was sent to him. It is written in red ink to signify blood. At 
the top of the paper is a grinning skull and cross-bones, and 
directly below it is a bloody hand, with the word " Death" writ- 
ten in it. Underneath is the following : 

" Jason Caskey : One month from to-night, November 2d, if 
you do not join us, you will receive your death-warrant, and two 
days from then your death. By order of The Skulls." 

Take the statistics of youthful criminals in the city of 
New York for six months. How startling are the 



IMPURE LITERATURE. 93 

facts ! Their ages were from seven to twenty : Nineteen 
committed murder, 50 attempted murder, 100 were 
guilty of burglary, 32 of highway robbery, 35 of 
grand larceny and 93 of larceny ; 19 were drunkards, 
16 were suicides, 12 attempted suicide, 11 were mur- 
dered, while others were guilty of train-wrecking, of 
arson, of forgery, of counterfeiting, of picking pockets, 
of manslaughter, of conspiracy to kill, of mail robbery, 
and of malicious mischief — in all 441 youthful crimi- 
nals. 

Now let us turn our attention to some of these im- 
pure publications, and to the extent of their circulation. 
It is said that there are six hundred thousand copies of 
story papers for the young published weekly in the city 
of New York. Three of our metropolitan publishers 
have issued 670 different trashy story-books and periodi- 
cals. Let us look over the contents of one of these 
weekly papers, "A Story Paper." How attractive to 
the young ! Here are some of the contents of a single 
number : 

" A conspiracy against a school-girl." 

' ' One girl hired to personate a rich girl, and marry a 
villain in her stead." 

" A beautiful girl, by lying deceit, seeks to captivate 
one whom she loves." 

" Six assaults upon an officer while resisting arrests." 

" A conspiracy against an officer to prevent the ar- 
rest of a criminal.' ' 

" A man murdered by masked burglars." 

" A woman who died in New York comes to life in 
Italy." 

" Two attempted assassinations." 

" One confidence operator at work to swindle a 
stranger. " 



04 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

" An assault on the highway." 

" A hired assassin. 9 ' 

" One babe stolen to substitute for another." 

" One case of clandestine correspondence, and meet- 
ings between a girl and her lover." 

' i A girl running away at night marries to hide her " 
shame." 

And then, as a compensation : 

" A sermon from a celebrated Brooklyn divine. " 

As though a Brooklyn sermon could save any man, 
better than any other sermon. Two columns of a ser- 
mon, to offset thirty-four columns of diabolical trash, 
designed to corrupt the childhood of the Republic. 

And as to the author, what must be the moral turpi- 
tude, the utter filthiness, of the mind of man or woman 
through which is weekly filtered such mental putrefac- 
tion ? Do not tell me of sources of rotten fens, or mala- 
rious marshes ; there is nothing on earth that can com- 
pare to the detestable filthiness of the mind of such an 
author. 

But let us turn to what claims to be a more respect- 
able source of literature — namely, our daily papers, our 
metropolitan journals, owned by respectable and church- 
going citizens, and edited by scholarly gentlemen, with 
whom it is always a pleasure to meet. Yet what a ban- 
quet of crimes do they serve up to us every morning ! 
Murder, theft, arson, abduction, adultery, divorce. It 
were enough to say that one brute had killed another ; 
that a wretch had violated his marriage vows ; that a 
man, bereft of honor and virtue, had committed depre- 
dations upon the property of another. But the mere 
statement of facts seems not to be sufficient. The de- 
tails are given by an artist's hand. Reporters are schol- 
ars ; they are university men ; they are nothing unless 



IMPURE LITERATURE. 95 

they are artists ; they must give the details of crime in 
sensational descriptions. The effect of all this is to gild 
crime, to induce a recklessness of life, to cheapen female 
virtue, to inspire the young with a desire to be a hero 
in crime. Your children read these papers. They 
could not learn more of crime were they the associates 
of the criminals themselves. Indeed, it were far better 
for them to be the associates of such criminals, for then 
they would see the hicleousness of vice, of a criminal 
life, in the debauched physique, in the bloody encoun- 
ters, and in the scenes which follow. But now their 
thoughts become their criminal companions, and the 
glamour of romance is thrown around these terrible 
deeds. 

In your intense business life you read what is neces- 
sary for your information of passing events, and leave 
these papers to fall into the hands of your children. 
What they read becomes the subject of conversation 
with their school and street companions, and thus a new 
edition of the story of the crime is issued. 

When will public opinion demand a reformation in 
American journalism to exclude whatever is offensive to 
refined taste and corrupting to the sensibilities of the 
young ? 

Now let us turn our attention to the dime novel. I 
do not object to fiction as the vehicle of entertainment 
and instruction. Fiction is truth taught through the im- 
agination. Individuals are brought into such relative 
positions as to develop sentiment and passion. How 
great the pleasure given by a work of pure fiction 
wherein the highest order of genius is displayed in the 
conception of the plot, in the arrangement of the inci- 
dents, and in the development of the story up to the de- 
nouement, but never violating the actualities of human 



96 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

life ! Who does not recall the pleasure of reading Scott, 
and Thackeray, and Dickens ? Who has not been tired 
with indignation, and excited with merriment, as he has 
read the satirists and humorists of the past and of the 
present ? Bunyan wrote fiction. There is fiction in the 
Bible. Some of the parables of our Lord are supposi- 
tions, the creations of His divine imagination to illustrate 
what might be. 

Some saints may be quaking under the assertion that 
their pastor believes in fiction. If so, let them quake 
until they are rid of their bigotry, and can rise to the 
appreciation of this class of literature, which has been so 
potent in the vindication of truth. 

But there is a difference between the novel and novel 
reading. One is the style of instruction, and the other 
may be a mental habit. The habitual novel-reader sur- 
renders his mind and life to fiction which dwarfs the 
mind, which is a perpetual appeal to the emotions, and 
which leads to levity of life, levity of motive, levity of 
feeling. The habitual novel reader abandons himself to 
the wild play of the imagination, dwells on beautiful 
forms never realized, does violence to the relation of the 
emotions to conduct, and violates the law of means to 
ends. u Ignorance is bliss." There should not be a 
doubt of this proposition ; and an uninformed mind is 
preferable to one that has become a monstrosity through 
the reading of fiction. 

And what is the duty of parents in the intellectual 
training of their children ? To study the trend of their 
minds, and to furnish them with proper books — books of 
love, of romance, of adventure, of sport, of fun. Do 
not close them with stupid religious books. Keep from 
them the sensational novel, which inflames the imagina- 
tion. Keep from them the stories of criminals who are 



IMPURE LITERATURE. 97 

idealized into heroes. Keep from them the record of 
sympathetic jurors weeping over some magdalen. As 
there are evils of the intellect which should be avoided, 
so there are amusements of the intellect which should be 
furnished ; for such amusements are the antidote of 
criminal indulgence. 

There is nothing in the whole realm of even the best 
fiction that is more interesting and exciting than the 
adventures of explorers, the scenes of foreign travel, the 
abstract truths of science, brought down to the compre- 
hension of the common mind and delineated with genu- 
ine enchantment. What intellectual pleasure there is 
to be found in poetry, whether epic or pastoral, whether 
sacred or secular ! Nothing in romance is more thrill- 
ing, whether to child or man, than the histories of 
nations written by modern scholars. What splendid 
books have been produced on every department of nat- 
ure — on the habits of animals, on the characteristics of 
flowers, on the peculiarities of trees ! It only requires a 
little attention on the part of parents to furnish their 
children with books which will at once entertain and in- 
struct. 

Because of the baneful influence on childhood of cer- 
tain vicious books, parents should converse with their 
children on topics which, from a mistaken modesty, are 
usually avoided. Children will soon learn the nature of 
these topics. Their imagination will throw a false light 
upon the forbidden subject, and that light will be inten- 
sified by bad books. The father should make a com- 
panion of his son, and the mother should make a com- 
panion of her daughter. Whatever is natural is pure. 
Those things which we esteem the secrets of nature 
should be subjects of familiar conversation between par- 
ents and children. Let me speak calmly and plainly. 



98 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

There is one vice that is sapping the very life of the 
Republic. It is most prevalent among our youth of 
both sexes. If we may rely upon the testimony of 
physicians and upon medical books, if certain diseases 
are tell-tales, wasting the constitution and bringing on 
premature death, then there can be no question of the 
prevalence of this vice. Parents are greatly to blame 
for this. The children are ignorant of the wrong-doing. 
They experience the temporary pleasure, but are in- 
nocent of the guilt. The impure literature of the 
period ministers to this vice. It is clandestinely sent to 
our institutions of learning ; and to such an extent was 
this the case in one New England female college that 
its president was compelled to adopt the rule that no 
pupil should be allowed to receive anything by mail — 
whether book, or paper, or letter — until the contents of 
the same had been examined. Do you say this is a del- 
icate subject ? That does but half express it. It is a 
momentous subject. It involves the childhood of the 
Republic. Our great American admiral, Farragut, was 
saved by the conversation of his father. When the son 
was ten years old he had contracted vicious and vitiating 
habits. He was his father's cabin-boy. As a wise and 
prudent parent, the father conversed with his son on the 
evil influence of the habits which he had contracted, and 
then and there, in his father's cabin, and under the old 
flag of the nation, the boy made a series of resolves 
which led to a noble life, and gave to the Republic the 
greatest of admirals. 

Above all, parents should make the study of the Bible 
a joyous task. To the ordinary child that holy Book is 
surrounded with an overpowering solemnity. Its very 
presence is made to inspire a feeling of dread, and the 
child approaches it with a sense of fear. All this is 



IMPURE LITERATURE. 99 

wrong. The study of the Sacred Scriptures should be 
made a joyous duty. The charming parables, the wise 
proverbs, the romantic story of Joseph, the interesting 
and eventful life of David, the fascinating narratives of 
Bethlehem, and Bethany, and Nazareth, and the gala- 
day life of our Lord, who came as a bridegroom — these 
and similar subjects should be made attractive to the 
plastic, inquiring minds of the youth of our land. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 

Gambling is an ancient vice. All the authentic his- 
tories, all the reliable traditions, are in proof of its uni- 
versality, and that, from time immemorial, it has been 
co-extensive with the abode and business of man. The 
Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians gambled. 
Under the Empire and under the Republic, the evil ex- 
isted to such an extent among the Romans that legisla- 
tion was a necessity. In the best days of the Greeks, in 
the Golden Age of Pericles, the evil prevailed through- 
out the Grecian Confederation. The present is like the 
past. From the emperor to the coolie, the Chinese are 
a nation of gamblers. This social vice is prevalent in 
Japan and India and Persia. It is rife among the 
Turks. When sailing up the Persian Gulf, I saw a com- 
pany of Mohammedan pilgrims en route to some sacred 
shrine, and they divided the twenty-four hours of the 
day, between prayers and games. When they did not 
pray, they gambled. Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany, 
and France have been compelled to bring the power of 
law against this ruinous evil. Prior to the unification of 
Germany, not a few of the petty states were supported 
from revenues derived from licensed gambling establish- 
ments. England is no exception. According to Veck- 
man, " The first lottery was proposed in the years 1567 
and 1568, and, held at the west door of St. Paul's 
Cathedral, was drawn day and night from the 11th of 
January, 1569, to the 6th of May the same year. It 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 101 

contained 400,000 tickets at ten shillings each. The 
prizes consisted partly of money and partly of silver 
plate and other articles. The net profit was to be em- 
ployed in improving the English harbors. In 1746 a 
loan of £3,000,000 was raised on 4 per cent annuities, 
and a lottery of 50,000 tickets at £10 each ; and in 
1747, £1,000,000 was raised by the sale of 100,000 
tickets, the prizes in which were funded in perpetual 
annuities at the rate of 4 per cent per annum. During 
the same century the Government constantly availed it- 
self of this means to raise money for various public 
works, of which the British Museum and Westminster 
Bridge are well-known examples." But by an act in 
1823 lotteries were rendered illegal. Nor are Ameri- 
cans strangers to this vice. In some of the States a 
revenue is derived from licensed gambling saloons. 
The Territory of Montana is a sad example. In Ken- 
tucky and Louisiana lotteries are under the protection of 
the commonwealth, and now the Postmaster-General of 
the United States is forbidding the circulation of the 
printed advertisements of these lotteries through the 
mails. This social vice appeals to all classes for correc- 
tion. It appeals to every employer, it appeals to every 
parent, it appeals with unwonted force to the wives and 
mothers of the Republic. 

What is gambling, and what are its evils ? 

Gambling is an abuse of an innocent pastime. Some 
one has said that vice is the excess of virtue. That 
which is innocent in itself becomes a crime by excessive 
use. All nations have their games of recreation and 
pleasure. A nation without games is a nation of idiots. 
The people should have their pastimes. But it is a sad 
commentary upon the depravity of humanity that inno- 
cent pleasures are degraded into destroying evils. 



102 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

It may not be easy to define the sin of gambling. 
The word belongs to that family of words ' ' games and 
gaming, " and in its origin means sport, fun. For want 
of a better term we call it a social vice, because of the 
evils which flow therefrom to society. 

Gambling is the staking of property to win or to lose 
on mere hazard. It is not gain for gain. It ignores the 
law of equivalents. It is something for nothing. 

All industry, all trade, all legitimate business, is based 
on the law of something for something. What does the 
winner give in exchange for the money he takes ? 
Nothing. A man has a right to give his property, and 
he receives a reward for the same in the consciousness of 
a kindness done ; but in gambling he does not intend 
to give his money. The winner does not intend to give 
an equivalent in return. Gambling is robbery by 
mutual consent. 

Gambling' is the enemy of healthful and manly laoor. 
It means money without work. Its chief maxim is, 
" Take care of yourself ; sacrifice others." .Do yon say 
the gambler works ? So does the bank robber. How im- 
mense the skill, the patience, and the effort of him who 
robs a bank ! But it is a criminal work. It is an effort 
condemned by public opinion and just laws. Do you say 
the gambler displays skill ? Yes, but his is not the hon- 
orable skill of the pilot who guides his ship in a danger- 
ous sea ; nor of the lawyer who applies constitutional 
and statutory law in the intricacies of a case involving 
life or property or reputation ; it is not the skill of the 
artist in the production of works of art to refine public 
taste and adorn the face of society ; it is not the skill of 
the merchant in the wise management of trade ; it is not 
the skill of the banker in the application of the princi- 
ples of finance ; it is not the skill of the statesman who 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 103 

applies political economy to the welfare of the people ; 
it is not the skill of the physician who studies to cure 
disease and to put a heart beneath the ribs of death ; but 
it is the skill that sets at defiance all the laws of honor- 
able labor. It is the development of a cunning to lie 
and cheat and rob. 

I do not say that gambling is atheism, but I declare 
that it is contrary to the established laws of nature. 
Chance is the god of the gambler. He constantly ap- 
peals to the very uncertain and variable law of chance. 
Some mathematicians have sought to ascertain and for- 
mulate the law of chance, and they assert : " If you 
throw the dice it is thirty to one against your turning up 
a particular number, and one hundred to one against 
your repeating the same throw three times running ; 
and so on in an augmenting ratio. You take the box 
and throw ; at the first cast, up comes an unlucky num- 
ber that beggars you.'" You have no right to expose 
your property on such a tremendous margin of thirty to 
one, and of one hundred to one. There is certainty in 
agriculture ; there is certainty in commerce ; there is 
certainty in manufacture. God has ordained laws of 
honest industry, but these do not operate on such an im- 
mense margin. Do you tell me there is hazard in every- 
thing ? True ; but not to the same extent as in this. 
Men may be deceived in bargains which they make, in 
their investments, in their transactions ; but in all these 
there is a reasonable certainty of return. I do not say 
that gambling is confined to cards and dice. 

The principles of gambling are sometimes acted upon 
where there is neither wager nor play. Some men gam- 
ble with capital instead of cards, and take the chances. 
They throw their immense financial strength in favor of 
depression or of inflation, and hope thereby to win. 



104 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

Some gamble with the capital of others in reckless spec- 
ulation. Some gamble with false capital, which is a lie 
and a cheat. It is a mere fancy ; it has no existence or 
representation. It is a name without fame. Some gam- 
ble with ballots instead of dice, and the action of legis- 
latures is influenced thereby. It is a statement made 
before one of our courts that one railroad company, in 
the State of New York, paid $60,000 one year, and 
$205,000 another year, to obtain legislation ; and it was 
obtained. It is a duty of legislators to enact laws for 
the benefit of the people without bribes or money cor- 
ruption. But these large sums were paid to rob the 
commonwealth. Some men are too saintly to touch 
a card or throw a dice, yet they will risk the property of 
widows and orphans in an amount or kind of busi- 
ness for which their own resources are unequal. I 
would rather take the chances of a professional gambler 
at the bar of Grod than the chances of one of these 
saintly scoundrels who gamble with the money of 
widows and orphans. Public prejudice has segregated 
one branch of business in New York and pronounced its 
withering condemnation on it. One street is held up as 
the resort of gamblers and robbers. I am not the de- 
fender of Wall Street, but I would as soon take my 
chances for heaven from Wall Street as from Broadway, 
from a stock broker's office as from some banking- 
houses, or the headquarters of certain railway magnates. 
There are members of the Stock Exchange as honorable 
and honest as are any members of the venerable Cham- 
ber of Commerce of our great metropolis. It is quite 
true there are two classes of persons who frequent Wall 
Street who are a disgrace to honorable men : those who 
seek to depress certain stocks or other securities by de- 
stroying confidence in particular individuals, or in the 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 105 

value of the properties themselves, and then take advan- 
tage of such depression to accumulate a sudden fortune ; 
and those who seek the same end by the unnatural and 
unhealthy inflation of stocks and other properties, and 
thus come into possession of ill-gotten gains. Such men 
are not only gamblers, but they should be classed as 
criminals before the law. A citizen has the right to pur- 
chase stock out and out ; but it is an appeal to chance, 
it is downright gambling, to put up a margin and then 
either to seek, by personal means, the depression or in- 
flation of such stock, or to take the chances on their rise 
or fall. This is gambling ; it is an appeal to chance ; it 
is one hundred to one. Many a man has put up his only 
thousand dollars as a margin and lost, and then whined 
in the ear of Providence over the misfortune that befell 
him. 

Gambling is an injurious excitement without compen- 
sation and consolation. The gambler has hope, but it is 
not an anchor. It is an unmanageable sail that bears him 
upon the rocks. It is an excitement that consumes but 
never recreates. It does not promote health or happi- 
ness. The loser has no compensation. When the 
merchant loses, from circumstances beyond his control, 
he has the consolation of knowing that he did his duty. 
He has regret, but no remorse. He has the sympathy 
of others, and needs not their pity. God gives him con- 
solation ; he needs no pardon. The young man who lost 
$150,000 at cards could not say, " I did my best, and 
Providence sent me adversity." He has remorse, not 
regret. He may claim our pity, not our sympathy. 
When all that the merchant had is lost, his character is 
safe. When the gambler has lost his all, that includes 
his character. 

What a strange fascination there is in gambling ! 



106 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

What a spell it throws over the imagination ! No ser- 
pent ever charmed a bird with greater power, no fowler 
ever set a snare from which it was so difficult to escape. 
Why ? Gambling is an appeal to the pride of skill, to 
the love of superiority, to the heroism of our nature, 
and, above all, to gain without work. We all have seen 
some man under this strange fascination. It is mightier 
than other forms of delusion. We have seen an hon- 
ored father and husband under the fascination of a 
strange woman — beautiful, artful, enticing. He re- 
solves not to yield ; his conscience is against yielding ; 
he recalls his happy home, the wife of his bosom and 
the children of his loins, but the strange woman leads 
him astray. We have seen some great, imperial spirit 
under the charm of intoxication. Resolutions are made, 
vows are recorded, efforts are put forth ; in a moment 
of holy revenge the evil is consigned to the lowest hell, 
but the man has been charmed. We have seen the 
novel reader in a revery, wherein the imagination has 
been peopled with forms of fancy, in which the actuali- 
ties of life are disregarded and nature is perverted. 
With these is the fascination of gambling. All the 
better nature of the man is at times aroused against it. 
He resolves and resolves again ; he promises wife and 
children, the angels and his God, but he is under the in- 
fluence of an entrancing power. Who does not recall 
with pity that young and brilliant lawyer, who had led 
to the bridal altar one of the fairest daughters of the 
land, whose happiness lay in the embrace of a future 
like an ocean of pearls and diamonds, but who became 
addicted to this entrancing vice ? The habit had fast- 
ened upon him, its hooks of steel had entered his very 
soul. On a certain night he lost heavily. He then 
staked his splendid mansion, the patrimony from an 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 107 

honored father. The home was lost. In despair he left 
that hell of hells ; the night air touched his temples, but 
could not chill to the death this charm of charmers. He 
said there was one hope left ; he would return. The 
gamblers looked amazed at his reappearance. As his 
last stake — all that he had left in the world on which he 
hoped to recover all that he had lost — he staked his 
coach and horses. The game was played ; again he 
lost. Leading the winner to the street, and pointing to 
him, he said to the coachman, " Here is your master ;" 
and then, in a despair that knew no relief, a homeless, 
indigent wretch, he walked the streets of the silent, 
sleeping city ; he looked at the stars of his childhood, 
but they brought him no relief ; he lingered beneath the 
light of the street lamp, which only revealed a counte- 
nance of despair ; he pressed his temples and cursed the 
day of his birth. 

Gambling leads to the most heartless associations. It 
is proper to note the distinction between the professional 
and the non-professional gamblers. The latter are per- 
sons engaged in legitimate business, who gamble for pas- 
time, or money, or both. All that I have said thus far 
against this vice I apply to the practice of these non- 
professionals. It is an abuse of an innocent pastime ; it 
ignores the law of equivalents ; it tempts from lawful 
labor ; it is a homage paid at the shrine of chance ; it is 
an injurious excitement ; it ends in remorse. 

Eon-professional gambling is the feeder of the pro- 
fessional. Every private house wherein persons play for 
money is a recruiting office of the gambling hell, to fill 
the ranks of the professional gamblers. There is a 
direct path that leads from the one to the other. Ask 
that young man who lost so heavily at Saratoga last sum- 
mer where he acquired the propensity for gambling, and 



108 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

he will tell you, " In the private residence of ," 

wherein wealth abounds and beauty smiles. "Why not 
have your games for recreation without the hazard of a 
dollar ? 

Why should parents complain when their sons are 
rained ? Were I a dramatist I would write a drama of 
five acts. First : A young man in a private house, at 
cards, where beauty smiles and wealth allures. Second : 
In a hotel, where gentlemen meet, where the game is 
played for the refreshments of the hour, and where con- 
science is quieted by the soothing assurance that it is 
only pastime. Third : A gambling hell, where the pro- 
fessionals do congregate, where the attention to the 
game is intense, where self-consciousness reigns supreme, 
where fortunes are won and lost. Fourth : A den of 
thieves, from which decency and honor have departed, 
where dishonesty holds high carnival, where depreda- 
tions on the property of honest citizens are organized, 
where murder is planned. Fifth : A gallows, on which 
hangs the form of that once young and splendid man. 
It is the last game ; he loses all. 

Let us now look at the professional gamblers. Let us 
go in fancy to the place where they do congregate. We 
do not expect to find angels there, except fallen ones ; 
nor saints, except those who have outlived their useful- 
ness ; nor church members, except hypocrites. What 
is the average morality of the gambling fraternity? 
Who are the men found in those resorts ? There is the 
cynic, who sneers at virtue ; the polished debauchee, a 
modern Chesterfield ; the " swell," who is attractive by 
his flashing manners ; and the selfish man, bereft of all 
sensibility, who will take the last dollar, and then turn 
the loser out into the cold world. 

Gambling is not an isolated vice ; it is attended with 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 109 

a whole retinue of evils. The sparkling wine-cup passes 
from lip to lip ; inebriety is certain to follow ; intoxica- 
tion is a necessary inspiration ; the " strange woman" is 
companion to gamblers — she whose steps take hold on 
death and hell. There is a direct road from the gam- 
bling hell to the penitentiary. Nearly all the embezzle- 
ments of which banking clerks have been convicted may 
be traced to gambling. This social vice disqualifies for 
all the duties of life. It ruins the mechanic, the lawyer, 
the physician, the statesman. It is the desolation of 
home itself. 

And what are the remedies ? Let the Pulpit lift up 
its voice of warning. Let clergymen appreciate the ter- 
rible evil in all its bearings. Let them press home upon 
the conscience of the people the great moralities of re- 
ligion. Let the Press keep the public informed of the 
dangers to which society is exposed, and especially of 
the dereliction of the police, whose business it is to sup- 
press these places which entice the young men of our 
city. And let parents, by precept and example, from 
childhood to youthhood, from youthhood to manhood, 
throw around their sons and daughters those gracious in- 
fluences which will make home the supreme charm of 
human life. 



CHAPTER IX. 

MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENIAL. 

" If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no 
flesh while the world standeth." Such is the noble sen- 
timent of the noblest of men. Some of the Corinthian 
believers had been converted to Christianity from idol- 
atry ; others from Judaism. The Jews abhorred what- 
ever had been offered in worship to an idol ; but the 
Gentiles had not been thus educated. Some of the latter 
had eaten of the meat which had been offered to an idol, 
and having been instructed that an idol is nothing, 
thought it no harm to eat the sacrificial meat. But there 
were other Gentile converts who had not been so far en- 
lightened, and, not knowing the superior education of 
their brethren, were in danger of being led astray by 
their example. St. Paul appeals to the former in behalf 
of the latter. He concedes that an idol is nothing ; that 
meat offered thereto in worship is not thereby necessarily 
defiled ; that to eat thereof was not sin jper se y but 
because the eating thereof was a bad example, and 
tended to the spiritual injury of those for whom Christ 
died, he therefore appealed to them to desist from the 
practice. It was an appeal to Christian magnanimity, 
to philanthropy, to self-denial. Himself the example of 
self-denial to all, in the fulness of his own great soul he 
assures them, in the words already quoted : "If meat 
make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the 
world standeth." 



MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENIAL. Ill 

This incident in apostolic history suggests the present 
line of thought on the subject of temperance. I pro- 
pose to appeal to the magnanimity of the better classes 
in society to discontinue the moderate use of wines and 
liquors, for the benefit of those who are in danger of 
becoming confirmed inebriates. And in making this ap- 
peal, I propose to make certain concessions, to consider 
the efficaciousness of this proposed self-denial, and then 
' to enforce the duty by a variety of motives. 

I think we may concede three things. First, that 
wines and liquors have their legitimate uses. I do not 
say that they are indispensable, and have no substitute ; 
but it may be safely affirmed that they may be used 
beneficially. I am sure that every unbiassed man will 
feel with me bound to concede this much, and hence 
those ultra views, consigning wines and liquors to perdi- 
tion, placing them under the ban of the Almighty and 
of society, cannot find favor with calm and reflecting 
men. Were this the place, I could establish the fact, 
beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there are two kinds 
of wine designated in the Bible. This distinction would 
relieve from all embarrassment the Lord Jesus Christ, 
by whose power 

" The modest water, awed by power divine, 
Confessed its God, and blushing turned to wine," 

and also relieve other Biblical characters and many pas- 
sages of Scripture from misapprehension, by showing the 
distinction between the good wine and bad, as recorded 
in the Bible. It is the utmost folly for any man to at- 
tempt to explain away certain passages of Scripture on 
any other hypothesis than the one just mentioned. 

Secondly, we are bound to concede that the man who 
drinks wine and liquor moderately is not a drunkard as 



112 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

denounced in the Holy Scriptures. By no fair interpre- 
tation of language, by no proper use of ideas, can such a 
man be brought under the ban of drunkenness as de- 
scribed in that passage, "No drunkard shall enter the 
kingdom of heaven." Evidently scriptural drunken- 
ness implies a ruling passion, a degrading slavery, and a 
power that has gained the mastery, which is superior to 
the man himself. 

In the next place, 1 think we are bound to concede 
that all moderate drinkers do not become confirmed ine- 
briates. You and I can recall persons who, through a 
series of many years, have been moderate drinkers, and 
yet are not confirmed drunkards. The reason may be 
found in their physical organism, which is not suscepti- 
ble to such influence in their case as in that of other per- 
sons. They may drink as much per day without apparent 
injury as those who are sensibly affected by the same or 
even by a less quantity. One inhalation of chloroform 
will put one man to sleep, while the same quantity will 
set another man wild. The difference is found in the 
difference of organic susceptibility. Hence some men 
may drink and not become confirmed in habits of ine- 
briation, because of the peculiarity of their organism. 
That they are not drunkards is no credit to them ; it is 
to be placed to the credit of their temperament, for 
that which does not intoxicate them would and does in- 
toxicate others. Therefore, no argument in favor of the 
free use of liquors can be drawn from those men who, 
in despite, as it were, of nature, thus practise moderate 
drinking through a long series of years. Let us, there- 
fore, remove this old sophistry, and make this point 
plain and emphatic, and give the credit to nature and 
not to man. 

With these concessions freely admitted, let us now pass 



MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENIAL. 113 

to consider the question : Were the better classes of 
society to discontinue the moderate use of wines and 
liquors, would that tend to diminish the habit and evils 
of intemperance ? If so, how ? 

It would be the expression of apprehension that eon- 
firmed inebriety might follow. It would be the tocsin 
of alarm. It would imply danger ahead. It would be 
the reassertion of two facts — viz., that all confirmed 
drunkards w r ere once moderate drinkers, and that all 
moderate drinkers may become confirmed inebriates. 
Hence comes the law that absolute safety is in total ab- 
stinence. There is safety in that for all. This would 
be an example and a warning. 

It would render the trade in wines and liquors, in- 
cluding the manufacture and sale — wholesale and retail 
— of the same, less profitable, and lead to its abandon- 
ment. I suppose it is true that the larger profits of the 
trade are derived from the sale of such wines and liquors 
as are used by the higher classes of society ; that the 
proprietors of our splendid saloons and hotel barrooms 
derive a larger profit from fancy drinks than from 
" whiskey straight." The logical effect of the discon- 
tinuance of the use of such drinks by such persons would 
be the closing up of nine tenths of all our fancy saloons 
and hotel barrooms. This, in turn, would affect the 
wholesale trade, and this the manufacturer ; and cutting 
off the supply of drunkards from the ranks of moderate 
drinkers and rendering the article of intoxication itself 
scarce, the end would be gained, and intemperance 
would soon cease to exist. Many a man engages in the 
wholesale and retail business of selling liquor, not so 
much from the love of liquor as from his cupidity. 
And just as soon as these citizens find that their busi- 
ness has ceased to be profitable, they will abandon it and 



114 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

go into something else. If these are facts, are we not 
justified in the assertion that a grave responsibility for 
the evils of intemperance rests upon the moderate 
drinker and upon those who indulge in fancy drinks ? 

Were the higher classes of society to discontinue the 
moderate use of wines and liquors, the effect would be 
to render the custom of drinking unfashionable. Fash- 
ion is only another term for public sentiment. Ac- 
knowledged evils are tolerated by common consent. 
Public sentiment is the energy of law. There were laws 
against duelling prior to the duel between Hamilton and 
Burr, but for lack of public sentiment they were dead. 
The death of Hamilton, however, changed the public 
sentiment, and the duellist is now considered a barbari- 
an. Fashion is at once a master and a monster : a mas- 
ter in the supremacy of power, a monster in the cruelties 
inflicted upon mankind. What and how we eat, our 
style of dress, the construction of our dwellings, our 
modes of travel, are all governed by fashion. Fashions 
rarely come up. They almost always go down, till, in 
the last modified form, they touch the bottom of society. 
Extravagance in the rich begets extravagance in the 
poor. Many a clerk has ended his days in the peniten- 
tiary because he lived beyond his means. Many a 
daughter has forsaken the God of her youth, and gone 
with her whose ways take hold on death, because she 
coyeted the pleasures of dress. What we want, there- 
fore, is to render the custom of drinking unfashionable, 
so that those in the lower grades of life will not think 
that they are out of the world if they do not imbibe from 
the intoxicating cup. For the lower classes of society 
have just reason to complain that the custom has been 
set them in high places. 

Then the plan I propose involves another thought. It 



MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENIAL. 115 

would increase the power to persuade. Example is the 
inspiration of persuasion. The life of Christ is of more 
value to the world than His teachings. Without His 
lofty, symmetrical character ; without His life of unpar- 
alleled purity and benevolence, His most wise and most 
beautiful lessons would be to mankind " as sounding 
brass and a tinkling cymbal." Here is a father on 
whose dinner-table the wine sparkles ; he seeks to re- 
form an inebriated son. He pleads, he argues, he prays ; 
but all his arguments are paralyzed by his own moderate 
drinking. " Physician, heal thyself," is the son's with- 
ering reply. The wise must educate the ignorant ; the 
strong must strengthen the weak ; and only the pure can 
save the guilty. " What is good for the father is good 
for the son," is a satisfactory argument for the latter's 
use. The persuasive power of example is the greatest. 
The pledge, societies, asylums, and law are proper, but 
impotent without it. 

But against this, our personal liberty may be urged as 
a valid objection. Personal liberty is a natural right, 
and the freedom to exercise it is one of the noblest 
achievements of the age. Each man has a right to him- 
self ; to the results of his mental and physical labors ; to 
eat and drink and rest ; to pursue happiness. All this 
should be conceded, and is. Yet there is not in all this 
universe absolute liberty. The highest form of personal 
liberty is bounded by the law of limitation. You can 
grow only so high. You can eat only so much. You 
can sleep only so long. Conceding this, may we not in- 
quire whether there is not another law of limitation or a 
further limitation to this personal liberty — the law of 
Christian self-denial which has its formal expression in 
the Golden Rule, " "Whatsoever ye would that men 
should do unto you, do ye even so to them : for this is 



116 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

the law and the prophets" ? And the same thought is 
expressed in those words of Paul to the Romans : 
6i Let not your good be evil spoken of." Doubtless, too 
much is often demanded of Christian men. The world 
is hawk-eyed. It is rigorously exacting. Yet it is 
better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. There are many 
things innocent in themselves, but the true man prefers 
to sacrifice them — to deny himself that which, though in 
itself innocent, may be abused by others, and thus inno- 
cent pleasures be converted into criminal passions. You 
and I have each a fast horse ; we are on the same road, 
and try the speed of our respective animals, whatever 
it may be — 2.50 or 2.20. There is nothing wrong in 
that per se. Those horses were made by the Creator 
for fleetness, and what is more delightful than to ride 
behind one of those noble creatures ? But young men ob- 
serve us on the road ; they propose to try their fast 
horses, and, in addition to the trial, bet a hundred dol- 
lars on the result. They transfer their habits from the 
road to the race-course, and we see before them the 
gambler's end. Self-denial, philanthropy, magnanimi- 
ty, should induce us to forego our pleasure for the good 
of the others. The same thing is true in regard to 
games of chance. There is nothing wrong per se in 
our playing a game of cards. But the habit may become 
an example to others who will abuse it. Doubtless you 
and I could behold some tragedian or comedian on the 
stage in some of the grand creations of the Bard of 
Avon, and there would be no sin in it per se, for Gk)d 
made Shakespeare and gave him his marvellous genius ; 
and may not the day come when men may behold these 
things without deleterious results ? But take the asso- 
ciations of the drama ; the associations of those con- 
nected with it, and their influence upon society, and the 



MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENIAL. 117 

good man foregoes the pleasure that he may save others 
from consequences that may be traced to the drama. It 
is a higher pleasure to know that by our self-denial we 
have saved others from sin and death than to enjoy the 
pleasures of which we have denied ourselves. Perhaps 
the noblest question a man can put to himself is, " How 
may I suffer and thereby save others ?" and he only has 
reached the true humanity who can answer that question 
by deeds of philanthropy and self-sacrifice. 

But let us look at the motives which should induce us 
to this self-denial. Let us remember that nothing great 
or good is accomplished in any department of life with- 
out the practice of self-denial. Enter yon college, where 
are two young men of equal endowments and equal 
promise. Impatient of college restraint, preferring the 
song, the dance, the race, one lags in his studies, and 
with difficulty receives his diploma. The other is rarely 
seen where wit sparkles, beauty glows, or fashion shines. 
Pale, thoughtful, studious, his clear eye is dreamy ; 
visions of the future rise before him. Charmed with 
the languages, he hopes one day to speak in other 
tongues, in which great men speak, in which great 
thoughts are found ; or before him are long tables of 
figures, and he is now competing with the older mathe- 
maticians for the prize of honor. Or, like Bacon, he 
has marked out for himself a new course of scientific in- 
vestigation. This is the difference between Bonaparte 
and Washington ; between Frederick the Great and 
John Howard ; between Chesterfield and Sir Philip 
Sidney. Our forefathers were British freemen. They 
could have lived in comparative ease and freedom, but 
they preferred to deny themselves wealth and ease that 
they might achieve for us a better civilization. 

The Son of God enjoyed a glory with the Father 



118 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

before the world was. Enthroned in glory, worshipped 
by angels, the Ruler of the universe, He might have re- 
mained amid the beatitudes of Paradise. But He laid 
aside His crown ; He withdrew from the society of 
angels ; He came to earth " a man of sorrows and ac- 
quainted with grief," to save a lost world. " For yo 
know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though 
He was rich, yet, for your sakes, He became poor, that 
ye through His poverty might be rich." 

Take the whole history of the world from Adam to 
this day, and whatever has been attained that is beauti- 
ful in art, beneficent in science, salutary in law, noble in 
charity, Godlike in religion, has been achieved by self- 
denial. Is the sparkling wine so sweet and the animat- 
ing draught so fascinating that you cannot abandon them 
to save millions from the drunkard's woes ? You should 
be prompted to this duty of self-denial by the safety of 
yourself and your family. Some of you may drink 
moderately through a long series of years and not 
become confirmed inebriates. You may be exceptional 
cases, but from your ranks will go the majorities to swell 
the vast army of drunkards. 

The great massacre in Damascus, in 1860, in which 
hundreds were slain and millions of property destroyed, 
had its origin in the quarrel of two schoolboys, one a 
Mohammedan, the other a Christian. The great fire 
which a few years since reduced to ashes the finest por- 
tion of Portland had its origin in the careless discharge 
of a firecracker thrown from the hand of a boy. Total 
abstinence is the only safety of some — the sure safety of 
all. Ev^ery career of crime had its starting-point in 
some small offence, and then the career widened and 
lengthened like the Mississippi. Every drunkard can 
retrace his life of sin and shame back to the first glass. 



MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENIAL. 119 

According to Grecian mythology, Jupiter commanded 
Vulcan to make a beautiful woman, who was dressed by 
Minerva, adorned with charms by Venus, and endowed 
with a deceitful mind by Mercury. In her hand she 
held a casket, beautiful without, but within were all the 
miseries of mankind. When admitted among men she 
opened that fatal box, and forthwith stalked abroad, by 
day as well as by night, all the maladies and woes which 
now curse the human race. The first glass is Pandora's 
casket, beautiful to look upon, but within are health 
in ruins ; hopes destroyed ; affections crushed ; prayer 
silenced ; grief sitting on the vacant seats of paternal 
care, of filial piety, of brotherly love, of maternal devo- 
tion ; crimes of every name and hue, from broken vows 
to ghastly murders ; home deserted ; prisons whose hor- 
rid doors open inward ; poverty and vice, twin compan- 
ions ; shattered forms ; tormented souls ; a cheerless 
grave ; a burning hell ; a dishonored life ; an offended 
God. ' 

Where is woe ? where is sorrow ? where are conten- 
tions ? where are babblings ? where are wounds without 
cause ? where is redness of eyes ? In the first glass ! 
O parents ! O children ! touch not the first glass ! 

Be induced to this self-denial by the happiness which 
will accrue thereby to society at large. We shall infer 
the happiness by contemplating the misery. Shall we 
call to our aid the sublime science of numbers in form- 
ing our estimate of this misery ? Statisticians, whose 
learning and research command our confidence, inform us 
that in the United States there are not less than 133,000 
places licensed to sell intoxicating liquors, employing 
390,000 persons. And if to this number we add those 
engaged in the manufacture and wholesale traffic, the 
total number will reach 570,000 persons, or one man to 



120 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

every 75 inhabitants. But the whole number of clergy- 
men and teachers in our land engaged in the benevolent 
work of religion and education is only 150,000, or about 
one fourth the above number. It is estimated that the 
total cost of intoxicating liquors used each year in our 
country is $700,000,000, to which must be added $40,- 
000,000 for criminals, while the entire clergy of the 
country does not cost $30,000,000. It is estimated that 
every year intemperance sends to prison 100,000 per- 
sons, reduces 200,000 children to worse than orphanage, 
adds 600,000 to the long list of drunkards, and sends 
60,000 citizens to premature graves. It is also estimated 
that while fewer women drink than men, yet a larger 
proportion of those who do drink become habitual 
drunkards. In New York, within the last ten years, 
out of 133,000 persons arrested for intoxication, 66,000 
were women ! Alas for a woman drunkard ! How our 
thoughts are roused to pity and our words to complaint 
when we think what might have been the result to us if 
our mother, our wife r our daughter, our sister had gone 
in the paths of intoxication ! Could I speak to women 
high in social position to-day, and speak plainly, I would 
speak with earnest emphasis. To me it is absolutely ap- 
palling as I mingle in society, to see with what readiness 
those who are worthily called ladies — called so from their 
virtue, their intelligence, their education, their acknowl- 
edged refinement — drink the sparkling champagne when 
" it stirreth itself in the cup." 

O women ! will you not lift your hands to heaven to- 
day, and swear that never in the future shall the spark- 
ling wine touch your lips ; never again shall your ex- 
ample be against total abstinence ? 

Intemperance is the scourge of the world. There is 
no evil written in the long catalogue of moral and politi- 



MAGNANIMITY OF SELF-DENIAL. 121 

cal woes attended with more harm to individuals or 
to society than inebriation. Profanity, larceny, lying, 
murder, are the offspring of intemperance. To substan- 
tiate this no elaborate argument is necessary ; for the 
records of our penitentiaries, the inscription on the soli- 
tary prison wall written by the pen of time and the ink 
of tears, and the pauper's grave, are all proofs in sup- 
port of the allegation. O inebriation ! thou habit of 
folly, thou hast dimmed the brilliant genius of the legis- 
lator, philosopher, and orator, sealed the mouth of 
heaven-commissioned ambassadors, torn the royal diadem 
from the monarch's brow, and robbed the chieftain of 
his hard-won laurels. 

But it would be more tolerable if the evils resulting 
from this pernicious habit were confined to the drunkard 
himself. Yet it is not so ; for the lovely and intelligent 
women of our land are the victims of his misery. They 
drink in secret the cup of sorrow to its dregs ; and, 
while we commiserate the condition of the unhappy 
man, let us lift the curtain and behold the disconsolate, 
weeping, heart-broken wife. Perhaps he won her in 
the morning of life, when the bloom of youth, health, 
and sobriety glowed upon his cheek, and the light of 
genius animated his bewitching countenance. They 
went to the altar with hearts of tenderness and love. 
Heaven smiled upon the union. Hope sat, like a bird of 
auspicious omen, high in the green leaves of fancy, and 
poured into her bosom the sweet harmony of a terres- 
trial elysium. But her husband, in an unsuspected hour, 
forgets his bridal pledge. The sparkling bowl of friend- 
ship steals upon the hours of domestic enjoyment ; his 
noble nature yields to the bright eyes of the charmer ; 
and, alas, he becomes, step by step, a daily drunkard. 
What scenes follow ? Night after night finds him in the 



122 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

midst of his family brimful with spirits and passions ; 
his wife meets him with a trembling hand, an aching 
heart, and a tearful eye ; his dear children retreat from 
corner to corner as if an evil spirit had made its appear- 
ance ; and even his faithful dog skulks away with the 
growl of anticipated blows. The little homestead 
becomes the theatre of family broils and angry blows, 
and neither his wife nor his children are secure from the 
fury of his drunken madness. Where the sacred anthem 
should bear aloft the sweet music of the family, the wild 
song of the drunkard is chanted to the impious orgies of 
vice. Where the grateful breath of prayer like incense 
should waft to heaven their wants and woes, he pours 
forth a torrent of curses upon their devoted heads. 
Where the holy Bible should spread its banquet of wis- 
dom and love, he opens the tablets of a heart on which 
are written the history of wretchedness and woe. 

Who does not shudder at this mournful picture of des- 
olation and ruin ? But mark the condition of his wife ; 
the cries of her half-clad, starving children ring in her 
ears daily, and the hectic flush of premature death dries 
up her briny tears as they trickle down her cheeks ; her 
heart is a little city of ruins — hope, pride, fortune, and 
happiness, all have departed ; and even while she binds 
up his wounds, his gross ingratitude sends keenest pangs 
to her heart. While she sheds tears of sympathy over 
his wayward conduct, his cruel treatment freezes them 
into ice-drops before they reach his bosom. While she 
would entwine her affections around him as the virgin 
bowers enfold the sturdy oak, his swelling anger and 
feverish passions snap the gentle cords and spurn her 
proffered tenderness. But still the doting wife grasps 
the hand that withers her hopes of earthly happiness, and 
leans tenderly upon that cheek that consumes the sweet- 



MaCxaximity of self-dental. 123 

ness of her youth, her health, her beauty. But why are 
these things so ? Why this self -ruin and self -degrada- 
tion ? Why this prodigality and penury ? Why this 
personal and domestic suffering and misery ? I answer 
these interrogations calmly. Intemperance is supported 
and perpetuated by fashion and law. Fashion — crimi- 
nal, nefarious, diabolical fashion — sanctions with its un- 
known power moderate drinking. In this cold w r orld 
whatever is fashionable is right. No matter how inju- 
rious to health, corrupting to morals, or molesting to 
society the practice may be, if it is only fashionable, it 
is all right. It is fashionable to drink that social glass ; 
hence, people think they must drink. But let the world 
remember that in our splendid saloons and fashionable 
circles the inebriate's career begins, and that Bacchus 
manufactures drunkards out of moderate drinkers. 

This is but a mere outline of the picture of the great 
scourge, which picture, in the fulness of awful detail, 
God alone can paint. What, then, is the logical, philo- 
sophical conclusion, founded on truth and common- 
sense ? It is this : That the race can be saved from 
these woes by the self-denial of the higher classes of 
society ; that total abstinence is the safety of all ; 
that, while some who moderately drink may escape in- 
ebriety, yet total abstinence will be not only the safe- 
guard of them, but the safeguard of all. Then, in senti- 
ment with that glorious man, St. Paul, let us say, " If 
wine make my brother to offend, I will drink no wine 
while the world standeth." Doing this, you may be 
imitators of Him who, though He was rich, became poor, 
that we through His poverty might be made rich. 

God awaits your decision. Recall the self-denial of 
Christ for the benefit of mankind, then follow His ex- 
ample. 



CHAPTER X. 



COMMERCIAL INTEGRITY. 



The duties of Christianity are twofold : ethical and 
devotional. The former prescribe the relations between 
man and man, such as liberty, justice, property, reputa- 
tion, veracity, chastity, citizenship ; the latter include 
all those relations which exist between God and man, 
and comprehend reverence for His name, love for His 
person, and obedience to His laws. It is one of the 
blunders and crimes of our day to divorce the ethical 
from the devotional. Men enter their sanctuaries on the 
Sabbath day, and are conspicuous for their devontness, 
while in the every-day concerns of life they studiously 
ignore those great moralities which underlie all accept- 
able worship to Almighty God. While we are bound to 
rejoice in many well-known examples of commercial in- 
tegrity, we must deplore the prevalence of business dis- 
honesty. 

There is an evident want of appreciation of the sacred- 
ness of property. We esteem life sacred, and the mur- 
derer is hounded ; we esteem reputation sacred, and the 
libeller is imprisoned ; we esteem family honor sacred, 
and the traducer thereof is held up to public reprobation. 
Why should we not esteem the rights of property as 
sacred ? There is a dulness either in the intellect or in 
the conscience touching this matter. Men who stand 
the guardian of all other human rights invade this right 
with the recklessness of a bandit. The controlling ques- 



COMMERCIAL INTEGRITY. 125 

tion of the day is not, " How can I make money ?" — 
that is honest and honorable — but, " How can I get that 
man's money?" Let us, therefore, seek to enlighten 
the public mind and intone the public conscience to a 
severer appreciation of man's natural right to property. 

What is the foundation of this right ? Each man is 
an individuality. He possesses a body, which connects 
him with the physical universe, and that universe is 
modified to supply his wants. He is dependent upon it 
— upon its air, its sun, the products of its soil — for the 
continuance of his existence. He is a part of that uni- 
verse, and has a right to what he can extract from it by 
the exercise of his natural powers. He has a right to 
the wealth of the sea, of the air and of the earth, to so 
much of it as is necessary to his existence and happiness. 
He is thrown upon his own resources ; he must sink or 
swim, he must live or die. This is his physical estate, 
and any invasion therein is a crime against the order of 
nature. 

Man possesses an intellect, and the exclusive right to 
the products thereof. He may investigate nature and 
publish his conclusions, he may entertain mankind by the 
productions of his imagination, he may lift the burden 
of toil from the shoulders of humanity by scientific dis- 
coveries or by useful inventions, in all of which he has 
a prescriptive right. As there is this physical and in- 
tellectual wealth, so there is the wealth of character, 
spiritual attainment, which may be injured by perversion 
and solicitation of evil. Every man has a right to him- 
self, to what he is, to what he acquires, to what he pro- 
duces ; the result is what men call property. Society 
recognizes these property rights. By the law of nations 
the first discoverer of a country is esteemed the rightful 
possessor thereof. The first inventor of an art is ac^ 



126 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

corded the right to exercise the same to his own profit, 
and he who fashions a piece of gold into some excellent 
image has increased his right therein by virtue of his 
skill. Around this right, divine and human law throws 
its awful sanctions. From His throne Jehovah has said, 
" Thou shalt not steal." He treats this right as a thing 
acknowledged, directs His precepts against every act 
violative of the same, and against the temper of mind 
from which such violence proceeded. In harmony 
therewith human governments, among their first acts, 
protect this individual right in wealth, and treat the 
offender as guilty of a wrong, and punish him accord- 
ingly. 

Upon the recognition of this right depend the exist- 
ence and progress of society. Ignore this right, and no 
man would labor for more than is sufficient for his indi- 
vidual sustenance, inasmuch as he would have no more 
right than any other man to the surplus. There would 
be then no accumulation, no provision for the future, no 
means by which improvements could be made. There 
would be no noble cities, no elegant structures, no im- 
proved means of travel, no advanced and refined civili- 
zation. It is therefore a question which involves a dis- 
tinction between the savage and the barbarian. A 
nation of thieves would be a nation of barbarians. The 
triumph of Christianity would be an impossibility. Sur- 
plus wealth is indispensable to high civilization, and he 
who offends against this natural right of property is an 
offender against the progress of society. 

What are some of the more common violations of 
this right ? Violence, deception, treachery. Property 
taken without the consent of the owner is theft. This 
is done by the individual robber, and by oppressive gov-, 
ernments in the form of unjust taxation. This violence 



COMMERCIAL INTEGRITY. 127 

done to private property by legislative bodies is a crying 
shame. Let us open our eyes to the fact. If govern- 
ments have no soul, it is our duty to put a soul into 
them. 

But what are the business deceptions of our day ? 
The intense competition in trade is doubtless the most 
powerful temptation to deceive. He who presents 
wrong motives to me for the purposes of gain, or need- 
lessly excites my fears, or inspires in me false hopes, or 
inflames my vanity, or tempts me to avarice, does vio- 
lence to my right of property. 

A broker on 'Change who causes false information to 
be circulated for the purpose of raising or depressing the 
price of securities, or the price of gold, and reaps profits 
from that deep rascality, is a criminal against honesty. 
He who gives publicity to the report that a given bank is 
on the verge of insolvency in order to depress its stock, 
and then purchases all that is thrown upon the market, 
and he who gives currency to reports that some rotten 
financial institution is solvent and flourishing, and then 
sells out his holdings, is alike a criminal against prop- 
erty ; and to all such men God says, " Thou shalt not 
steal." When, in the day of plenty, the shrewd, un- 
scrupulous speculator, by well-laid plans, monopolizes an 
article of food to create an artificial scarcity, and thus 
raises the price while the supply is abundant, and by so 
doing causes the poor man to pay one hundred per cent 
more for his food than the natural law of supply and de- 
mand requires, he is a robber of the poor as well as an 
offender against the acknowledged principles of com- 
mercial integrity. A property-holder who has a fine 
residence which, by facts in his possession, he knows 
will soon fall in value, either by the tendency of the 
better class of citizens to another part of the city, or 



128 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

because a canal will soon be constructed, or a railroad 
built, or a building for some objectionable purpose be 
erected near that residence — if he hides these facts and 
induces another person to purchase his mansion, he is not 
doing as he would be done by. If it is said that this 
practice is universal, that if we do not do it others will, 
and thus the evil w r ill remain, 1 answer that the plea is 
offered in justification of one of the most wicked of 
transactions. JS r o matter what others may do, we know 
better, and therefore we should not follow their bad ex- 
ample. 

But if the seller has no right to misrepresent the 
quality of his wares, if he should not overpraise his 
goods or excite the A^anity of the buyer in order to lead 
him to purchase them, neither should the buyer under- 
rate them in order to get them for less than their value. 
The buyer may be not less a cheat than the seller. 
Solomon has described this creature thus : " 'Tis 
naught, 'tis naught, saith the buyer, but when he has 
gone his way, then he boasteth." Between a rascally 
seller and a rascally buyer there is simply a test of per- 
sonal sharpness. 

Society is held together by the golden bands of mutual 
confidence. Men must have faith in each other's integ- 
rity. It is the principle which holds together man and 
wife, parent and child, employer and employe, friend 
and friend, the government and the governed. Mutual 
confidence underlies all business transactions. High 
honor is no less necessary to commercial life than it is a 
moral duty. Human nature never appears to better ad- 
vantage than when men prove true and honorable amid 
the multiform temptations of commercial life. There 
are times when a person is in such circumstances as to 
compel him to intrust his property to another, and for 



COMMERCIAL INTEGRITY, 129 

that other to imperil that property in speculation is a 
wanton betrayal of the trust reposed in him. There 
is a sacredness connected with this intrusted property 
peculiar to itself. Not long since ten thousand dollars 
were deposited in the hands of the treasurer of a charita- 
ble institution subject to the draft of its proper officers. 
In a moment of temptation that treasurer invested the 
amount in a business transaction ; he failed, and the 
money was lost. What was the ground of his justifica- 
tion ? What apology did he make ? What plea did he 
offer ? That he did not intend to rob the needy. But 
his intention had nothing to do with it. Underlying the 
question of intention was his avarice and the betrayal of 
a sacred trust. Men in our banking institutions guilty 
of embezzlement — the appropriation of intrusted funds 
in speculation — plead the parity of their intention ; but 
God does not judge men according to their intentions ; 
rather, He judges them according to their characters, out 
of which intentions flow, as effects from causes. 

The highest form of trust and honor is displayed by 
society in selecting citizens to administer the affairs of 
civil government, and when that trust is betrayed for 
purposes of personal gain, and that honor is tarnished by 
official corruption, the offence assumes a deeper dye and 
the criminality a greater turpitude. What can be a sad- 
der spectacle than for a man sitting in God's place on 
the tribunal of justice, and receiving a bribe with which 
to blind his eyes and pervert his judgment ? Or for a 
legislator, chosen to make laws for a people, to be a 
party to corrupt legislation in order to enrich himself at 
the expense of the public welfare ? Or for an executive 
or clerical officer to appropriate to his own uses that 
which a too-confiding people have intrusted to his hon- 
esty and honor ? As we rise in the scale of moral re- 



130 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

sponsibility from the midnight burglar, the murderous 
highwayman, the cunning trickery of the merchant and 
the buyer, the treacherous friend and the crafty specula- 
tor to the public officer who holds high position in the 
administration of government, we are bound to attach 
greater guilt to the dishonest acts of the latter. There 
are moral elements that enter into this kind of dishonesty 
which invest the offence with a criminality that does not 
attach to the dishonest acts of a private citizen ; for to 
dishonesty there is added hypocrisy ; the official is not 
what he assumes to be — namely, the faithful steward of 
the commonwealth. Under the robes of office there is a 
duplicity which merits public execration. He moves in 
society with the apostolic exterior of Judas, but upon his 
soul are the finger-spots of the thirty pieces of silver. 
To his duplicity he adds treachery. As the custodian of 
the people's interests, he has betrayed the public confi- 
dence, and proved unworthy the high trust committed to 
his keeping. And to his other offences he adds the 
crime of perjury. The oath of office is invested with all 
the attributes of religious devotion. God has been called 
upon to witness to the promise of his fidelity, but his 
solemn oath has been disregarded, as his honor has been 
tarnished, by his official corruption. Finally, to all 
these overt acts of dishonesty and hypocrisy and perjury 
he adds the evil influence of his example as a leader of 
public immorality. " The wicked walk on every side 
when the vilest men are exalted. " When it is his per- 
sonal interest so to do, the dishonest public officer wall 
oppose all measures for the moral improvement of 
society ; he will command his minions to tempt others, 
and through them he "will extend his contaminating in- 
fluence and continue his vile and venal work. 

And what are some of the prevalent causes leading to 



COMMERCIAL INTEGRITY. 131 

business dishonesty ? Extravagance, corrupt public sen- 
timent, inordinate love of wealth. The love of pomp 
and show is excessive as it is pernicious in this country. 
The vain desire to be considered rich is shown in partici- 
pation in those pleasures which only the affluent can 
afford. Fashionable society remorselessly rejects all 
butterflies which have lost their brilliant colors. Either 
to gratify a natural love for display or to indulge a desire 
to mingle in fashionable society, many a man lias cheat-' 
ed his business, by transferring his means to theatres, 
race-courses, and costly entertainments. This dispropor- 
tion between income and legitimate expenses brings on a 
crisis. The victim must be honest, live within his 
means, and abandon his social rank, or be dishonest and 
maintain his position in fashionable society. Which 
shall he choose — honesty with its mortifying social ex- 
clusion, or gayety purchased by dishonesty ? In such a 
moment some men shrink from the gulf, appalled at the 
dishonor which awaits them, but to too many, high life, 
with all its fraud, is paradise. It is paradise for the 
present only, for it is followed by a purgatory of public 
shame and mental anguish. 

Take that man of extravagant pleasures. He has 
reached a crisis. How can he pay the drafts upon him ? 
Two ways open to him : crime or brilliant speculation. 
Choosing the former, he stands guilty of embezzlement 
or forgery. Choosing the latter, his mind wanders in 
dreams of gain, and golden visions arise before him. 
He recalls the brilliant success of others ; he is enchant- 
ed by the glittering hope ; he ventures, and all is lost. 
Yet he cannot be driven from society ; he must flourish 
among the gay and festive ; in some feverish moment, 
vibrating between conscience and avarice, he staggers to 
a compromise ; he cannot steal, he will only borrow — ■ 



132 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

not openly, not from liis employers, not from his fellow- 
men, but from the vault ; he enters into a league with 
that vault, he makes a companion of it, he swears it to 
eternal secrecy, he whispers to it, " Yault, be thou my 
confidant ;" he resolves to restore the money before de- 
tection can ensue, and to reap the profits. Failing in his 
first attempt, he is led on, step by step, into a maze of 
complications ; false entries are made, perjured oaths 
are sworn, false papers are filed. He is called prosper- 
ous, he flourishes, he thinks himself safe, but he has em- 
barked on a sea over which sweep perpetual storms. At 
length the day of discovery comes ; his guilty dreams 
have long forsaken him, the dumb vault speaks as if 
with a thousand tongues ; his guilt confronts him, his 
doom is sealed, and he ends his miserable life either 
suddenly by suicide, or untimely by a prolonged exist- 
ence of shame and infamy. 

Closely allied with these evils is a corrupt public sen- 
timent. Society scourges the thief of Necessity, but 
pities the thief of Fashion ; the man who steals a loaf of 
bread to feed his starving family is sent to jail, but the 
man who is successful in bold, dishonorable speculation, 
by which others have been wronged, is caressed by 
society. There are men whose every thought is vile, 
whose every impulse is vicious, who have grown gray in 
the accumulation of ill-gotten gains, but who are wel- 
come wherever they choose to enter society. 

Why is official dishonesty considered less disreputable 
than dishonesty in private life ? A public man guilty of 
many flagrant sins is treated with consideration, whereas 
a private individual who perhaps is less guilty, is shunned 
as a pestilential criminal. Does the dignity of his office 
cover the public man like a cloak ? Does his office of 
trust and power commend him to our respect ? Do we 



COMMERCIAL INTEGRITY. 133 

dread his displeasure ? Do liis eminent abilities awaken 
our admiration ? Does his good fortune in having been 
chosen by the people command our consideration ? 
Rather is it not because the public conscience is de- 
praved ? Is it not true that all we demand of a public 
man is to reflect the public conscience ? If he rise above 
it he is denounced ; if he fall below it he is condemned. 

To what extent is this official corruption due to a cor- 
rupt public sentiment ? When we see the tricks of the 
petty merchant and his customer, the grasping avarice 
of the capitalist, the bold, overreaching schemes of the 
speculator, the crushing monopoly of banking, insurance, 
and railroad companies, the incessant, gigantic struggle 
of many men everywhere for the gold that perishes, may 
we not expect this spirit to penetrate the body politic ? 
And when those who are called the foremost citizens 
beleaguer halls of state and national legislation for the 
passage of bills and offer inducements to legislators to 
vote for their measures, the tempter is worse than the 
tempted. When people rolling in wealth, accumulating 
thousands and hundreds of thousands a year, will require 
men of more ability to serve them as public officers for 
a pittance so small that a first-class clerk in commercial 
circles would despise, it is no marvel that the cupidity of 
such should work corruption in public life. Let the 
fountain purify itself, and the streams will be pure. Let 
the people raise the standard of morals, and then demand 
public men to follow their example. May we not hope 
that the day of reform has come, when all good men 
everywhere will tighten the bands of public honesty and 
intone the conscience to a severer morality ? If this is 
not done, the midnight of our ruin is at hand. 

But underlying business dishonesty is a deeper cause, 
found in man's inherent love of wealth. u The love of 



134 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

money is the root of all evil." The strife of the world 
to-day is for wealth, and to reach the goal men do not 
strive lawfully. In the attainment of riches professedly 
good men do as they would not be done by. This 
thought absorbs their waking hours and fills the visions 
of their night. When foiled, they overreach ; when 
disappointed, they become unscrupulous ; when brought 
to the verge of ruin, they meditate crimes against man 
and sins against God. The strife in American society 
to-day is not for wisdom, nor for fame, but for wealth. 
It is not true that Americans love money for the sake of 
money. They love it for the pride and circumstance of 
fortune, for the power that it produces over men and 
nations, for the vanity that it gratifies in magnifying 
their personal importance. But let us remember that 
the great Master has proposed a sum which has never 
yet been solved : " What shall it profit a man if he gain 
the whole world and lose his own soul ?" A single soul 
will outweigh a universe. Let us erect a pair of scales. 
In one side place " the wealth of Ormus and of Ind," 
"the barbaric pearls and gold" of the East, the jewels 
of Golconda, the spices of Ceylon, the treasures of El 
Dorado, the possessions of Croesus, the jewelled crown of 
Alexander, the buried treasures of the deep — nay, the 
title-deeds of sun and moon and stars ; and in the other 
side place one deathless soul, made in the image of God, 
redeemed by His Son and winged for immortality ; and 
behold, the beam changes — one soul outweighs a uni- 
verse ! 

We have seen what a magnificent defence Christianity 
has made against the machinations of her enemies, from 
the infidels of Jerusalem to the idolaters of Rome, the 
atheists of France, the iconoclasts of Germany, the evolu- 



COMMERCIAL INTEGRITY. 105 

tionists of England, and the agnostics of America. We 
have seen the failure of infidelity to consummate its 
crime against humanity, by its brazen assaults upon the 
genius of government, which combines the majesty of 
law with the immutability of justice ; upon commercial 
integrity, which is the parent of industry and the soul of 
business ; upon the chastity of woman, which implies 
the modesty of maidenhood and the sanctity of mar- 
riage ; upon the happiness of home, which is the foun- 
tain of love and the nursery of nations ; upon the im- 
mortality of the soul, which is the mainspring of virtue 
and the inspiration of existence ; .upon the omnipotence 
of God, who is the Author of all things and the Sover- 
eign of the universe. We have seen the failure of infi- 
delity to originate invention, to lead discovery, to civil- 
ize the savage, to reform the vicious, to establish order, 
to conserve society, to find a saving substitute for the 
Faith which it repudiates, or to render an equivalent of 
that love divine which melts the human heart and saves 
the human soul, while it still remains a mystery to the 
greatest human intellect. 

Conversely, we have seen Christianity triumphant not 
merely in her defence against infidel assaults, but mainly 
in the onward movement of her mission to redeem the 
world. We have seen — foreshadowed by the prophets, 
guided by the Star of Bethlehem, led by the living 
Christ, aided by apostles and evangelists, illuminated by 
the lives of saints, consecrated by the blood of martyrs, 
cheered by the ministry of angels — we have seen that 
the course of Christianity along the highway of the cen- 
turies has been one triumphal march of universal human 
progress. We have seen her grand achievements in the 
building of churches by all evangelical denominations ; 
in the accessions to their congregations and communi- 



136 CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

cants ; in the demand for ministers and their devotion to 
their duties ; in the training of the children in the Sab- 
bath-schools ; in the circulation of religious books and 
periodicals, chiefly of the Bible, with its millions of 
copies in a multitude of languages ; in the support of 
home and foreign missions ; in the number and influence 
of educational institutions ; in the founding of public 
charities, including asylums for the deaf, the dumb, the 
blind, the insane, and the inebriate ; in the great dis- 
coveries in every field of human research, from new 
countries to new principles ; in the wonderful achieve- 
ments of inventive genius ; in the harmonious operations 
of liberty and law ; in international alliances to prevent 
barbarities ; in the elevation and influence of woman ; 
in the abolition of slavery ; in the marvellous increase of 
the Christian populations of the world, which now num- 
ber more than seven hundred millions. 

We see Christianity triumphant all along the line of 
the battle-field of life. She waves her banners, they are 
of light, they are of love ; she names her victories, they 
are over evil, they are all of peace ; she claims her 
trophies, they are sinners saved, they are souls redeem- 
ed ; she crowns her heroes, they are the good of earth, 
they are saints in Paradise. But she does not rest upon 
her laurels, reposing in contented contemplation of her 
well-won victories ; she is keenly conscious of how truly 
activity is a law of life ; she is still advancing over other 
fields of conquest toward the final fulfilment of her 
destiny — the evangelization of the world. 



22 

CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT. 

By J. P. NEWMAN, &.D., LL.D. 

The triumphs of Christianity— what a theme for an able and eloquent writer 
such as Dr. Newman is known to be ! Nothing could be more needed, in these 
sceptical times of ours, than just such a review as is here given in short compass 
aud-popnlar style. Dr. Newman has given us an overwhelming array of facts on 
the subject, and fac:s appealing to the common-sense of the masses, not merely to 
learned philosophers and theologians. Like arrows, barbed with wit, aimed 
with skill, shot with power, they fly far and strike deep. Young men and women 
especially need to read this work. It is not a dull, turgid, metaphysical tome, but 
a clear and animated statement of what Christianity has done and is doing for 
the world. 

A Capital Idea for Reading Circles. 

S03IETHIWG PRACTICAL. 

There is no reason why Reading Circles, properly managed, 
should not become an important auxiliary to the common school 
system as an educational factor in our country. If one or several 
should flourish in every city and village in the country, the problem 
of the education of the masses would be well on to solution. With 
young people, and especially young married people, they have be- 
come immensely popular wherever tried, and, even limited in extent 
as they are, the amount of good resulting from them is the source 
of gratification to all who care for the welfare of society. 

The chief drawback to the success of these societies has been the 
expense involved. To centre the interest of all members of a Circle 
upon one book, many volumes, have had to be purchased, and as 
good books have rarely been cheap ones, the outlay required in the 
course of a year became considerable. But to a very great extent 

EVEN T THIS OBJECTION HAS BEEN REMOVED, by the plan of OUr 

Standard Library. The works published therein are 'peculiarly 
adopted to the we of Reading Circles. They are fresh and timely. 
They are by the best writers of the day. They afford a pleasant 
variety of reading, of Science, Biography, Travel, Fiction, etc. 
They may be had, by subscribing for the series, at less than 20 cents 
apiece (that is, $5.00 for the 26 books), one volume being issued 
every two weeks. What a chance for those who are complaining 
during the long evenings of "nothing to do"! Let them band 
together, subscribe for the requisite number of copies of the Library, 
read them in unison, and discuss the books and their subjects, in 
their meetings, by essay, debate, and conversation. The social and 
literary benefits resulting will be invaluable. Nothing so fixes a 
thought or fact in the memory -as "talking it over" with others. 
And the moral consideration, in this day of so many questionable 
but enticing methods of amusement, is one whose importance can- 
not be over-estimated. 

Act on this suggestion at once, before the winter passes. Speak 
to your neighbor or friend, and set the ball to rolling. 

Subscription to the Standard Library for 1884 (26 books), 
$5.00 ; single copies, 15 or 25 cents. Subscriptions received by 
booksellers, newsdealers, and by the publishers, 

FUSE & WAUXALLS, 10 ami 12 Dcy St., New York. 



23 



Standard Library for 1884 



NEW AND ATTRACTIVE FEATURES. 

We take pleasure in announcing the following as the Prospectus 
for the Standard Library for 1884. The general plan will be the 
same as last year, but the experience we have gained and the better 
facilities we possess will enable us to make it superior in all 
respects. We can promise a 

RICH TREAT IN STORE FOR ALL. 

There will be included, as last year, Twenty-six New Boohs, not 
one of which has ever before been published in this country. They 
will be bound in the same tasty binding as last year, and printed on 
the same excellent quality of paper. 

Biography, Travel, and Popular Science will be represented by 
the ablest pens, and all works of a mere controversial character will 
be rigidly excluded. 

In addition, we have added 

A NEW FEATURE, 

in response to many solicitations. This is the intro luction of clears 
bright, and wholesome fiction of the highest litei*ary merit, and wholly 
free from anything to corrupt the morals or pervert the taste. One 
third of the Library will consist of works of fiction by such famous 
writers as 

Edward Everett Male 9 Julian Hawthorne, 
Joaquin Miller 9 George Parsons Lathrop, 

Ivan Turgenieff, etc., etc. 

Among the other works which we can announce in advance are 
' ■' The Story of Merv," by Edmond O'Donovan ; a new and timely 
volume by Dr. J. P. Newman, of New York ; a collection of the 
most striking writings from the works of the great German Philos- 
opher and Wit, Jean Paul Richter (a most inspiring work); an 
abridgment of one of the most fascinating works of travel, by Sir 
Samuel Baker (Baker Pacha), etc., etc. 

Subscriptions for the entire series of twenty-six new books will 
be at the same remarkably low price as last year — namely, Five 
Dollars. 



24 
PUBLICATIONS OF FUNK & WAGNALLS, NEW YORK. 

«* The most important and practical -work of the age on the 
Psalms."— SCHAFF. 

SIX YOI^VSIES NOW READY. 

-SPURGEON'S GREAT LIFE WORK- 

THE TREASURY OF DAVID! 

To be published in seven octavo volumes of about 470 pages eachj, 
uniformly bound, and making a library of 3,300 pages, 
in handy form for reading and reference. 
It is published simultaneously with, and contains the exact matter of, 
the English Edition, which has sold at $4.00 per volume 
in this country— $28.00 for the work when com- 
pleted. Our edition is in every way pref- 
erable, and is furnished at 

ONE-HALF THE PKIOE OF 

THE ENGLISH 

EDITION. 

Price, Per Vol. $2X0. 

"Messrs, Funk <5r" Wagnalls have entered into an arrangement with 
me to reprint THE TREASUR Y OF DA VID in the United States. 1 
have every confidence in them that they will issue it correctly and worthily. 
It has been the great literary work of my life^ and I trust it will be as 
kindly received in America as in England. I wish for Messrs. Funk suc- 
cess in a venture which must involve a great risk and muck outlay. 

"Dec. 8, 1881. C. H. SPURGE ON." 

Volumes I., II., UL, IV., V. and VI. are now ready; volume 
VH., which completes the great work, is now under the hand of the 
author. Subscribers can consult their convenience by ordering all 
the volumes issued, or one volume at a time, at stated intervals, until 
the set is completed by the delivery of Volume VII. 

From the large number of hearty commendations of this import- 
ant work, we give the following to indicate the value set upon the 
same by 

EMINENT THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS. 

tical vork of the age on the Psalter is 
The Treasury of David,' by Charles H 



Philip Scliaff, *?.I>., the Eminent 
Commentator and the President of the 
American Bible Eevision Committee, 
says: " The most important and prac- 



Spurgeon. It is full of the force and 
genius of this celebrated preacher, and 



(over.) 



RSrTke above work* imU be sent by ma8 t postage paid, on receipt of the price* 



PUBLIC A TTONS OF FUNK <£ tVA&NALLS, NEW YORK. 



rich in selections from the entire range 
of literature." 

Wl Ham M. Taylor, D.Do 

New York says: ' In the exposition of 
the heart 'The Treasurv of David* is 
sui generis, rich in experience and pre- 
eminently devotional. The exposition 
is aiwa s fresh. To the preacher it is > 
espacially suggestive." 

John. Hall, D.D., New tfoi-k, 
says: ''There are two questions that 
must interest every expositor of tha 
Divine Word. What does a particular 
passage mean, and to what use is it to 
be applied in public teaching? In the 
department of the latter Mr. Spur- 
geon's great work on the Psalms is 
without an equal. Eminently practical 
in his own teaching, he has collected in 
these volumes the best thoughts of the 
best minds on the Psalter, and espe- 
cially of that great bodyjoosely grouped 
together as the Puritan divines. I am 
heartily glad that by arrangements, 
satisfactory to all concerned, the Messrs. 
Funk & Wagnails are to bring mis great 
work within the roach of ministers 
everywhere, as the English edition is 
necessarily expensive. I wish the 
highest success to the enterprise." 

William Ormiston, D. IX, New 

York, says: " I consider « The Treasury 
op David' a work of surpassing excel- 
lence, of inestimable value to every stu- 
dent of the F Salter. It will prove a 
standard work on the Psalms for all 
time. The instructive introductions, 
the racy original expositions, the 
numerous quaint illustrations gath- 
ered from wide and varied fields, and 
the suggestive sermonic hints, render 
the volumes invaluable to all preachers, 
and indispensable to every minister's 
library. All who delight in reading the 
FsaltDS — and what Christian does not? 
—-will prize this w©rk. It is a rich 
cyclopaedia of the literature of tnese 
ancient odes." 

Tlieo. L. Cnyler, O.D.. Brook- 
lyn, says: " I have used Mr. Spurgeon's 
•The Treasury op David' for th~ee 
years, and found it worthy of its name. 
Whoso goeth in there will find ' rich 
spoils.' At both my visits to Mr. S. he 
spoke with much enthusiasm of thi3 
undertaking as one of his favorite 
methods of enriching himself and 
others." 

Jesse B. Thomas, D.JD-, Brook- 
lyn, says: " I have the highest concep- 



tion of the sterling worth of all Mr. 
Spurgeon's publications, and I incline 
to regard his Treasury of David' as 
having received more of his loving 
labor than any other, I regard its 
publication at a lower price as a great 
service to American Bible students. " 

New York: Observer says: " A 
rich compendium of suggestive com- 
ment upon the richest devotional 
poetry ever given to mankind. ' 

The Congregationalism, Bos- 
ton, says: "Asa devout and spiritually 
suggestive work, it is meeting with 
the warmest approval and receiving 
the hearty commendation of the most 
distinguished divines." 

United Presbyterian, Pitts- 
burg, Pa., says: "It is unapproached 
as a commentary on the Psalms. It is 
of equal value to ministers and lay- 
men — a quality that works of the kind 
rarely possess." 

North American, Philadelphia, 
Pa.: says: "Will find a place in the ■ 
library of every minister who kno^ s 
how to appreciate a good thing." 

New York Independent Fays: 
" He has ransacked evangelical litera- 
ture,and comes forth, like Jessica from 
her father's house, 'gilded with 
ducats' and rich plunder in the shape 
of good and helplul quotations/ 

New York Tribune says: "Fcr 
the great majority of readers who seek 
in the Psalms those practical lessons 
in which they are so rich, and those 
wonderful interpretations of heart-life 
and expression of emotion in which 
they anticipate the New Testament, we 
know of no book like this, nor as good. 
It is literally a « Treasury.* '• 

S. S. Times sa T s: "Mr. Spurgeon's 
style is simple, direct and perspicuous, 
oiten reminding one of the matchless 
prose of Bunyan." 

Western Christian Advocate, 
Cincinnati, O., says: " The price is ex- 
tremely moderate for so large and im- 
portant a work. * * * "We have ex« 
amined this volume with care, and we 
are greatly pleased with the plan of 
execution." 

Christian Herald says: •' Con- 
tains more felicitous illustrations, 
more valuable sermonic hints, than can 
be found in all other works on the 
same book put together." 



Jt&~ The above works will be sent by mail, postage faid, on receipt of the fnct* 



THE STANDARD SERIES. 

Best Book* for- a Trifle. 

Thjsse books are printed in readable type, on fair paper, and are bound in postal 
card manilla. 

These books are printed wholly without abridgment, except Canon Farrar's "Life 
of Christ " and his " Life of Paul." 



*♦. Trie: 

1. John Ploughman's Talk. C. H. 
Spurgeon. On Choice of Book*. 
Thomas Carlyle. 4to. Both.... $0 12 

2. Manliness of Christ. Thomas 
Hughes. 4to 10 

3. Essays. Lord Macaulay. 4to... 15 

4. Light of Asia. Edwin Arnold. 4to. 15 

5. Imitation of Christ. Thomas a 
Kempis. 4to 15 

6-7. Life of Christ. Canon Farrar. 

4to 50 

8. Essays. Thomas Carlyle. 4to.. 20 
9-10. Life and Work of St. Paul. 

Canon Farrar. 4to 2 parts, both 50 
U. Self-Culture. Prof . J. 8. Blackie. 

4to. 2 parts, both 10 

13-19. Popular History of England. 

Chas. Knight. 4to 2 80 

80-21. Ruskin's Letters to Workmen 

and Laborers. 4to. 2 parts, both 30 
22. Idyls of the King. Alfred Tenny- 
son. 4to 20 

33. Life of Rowland Hill. Rev. V. J. 

Charlesworth. 4to 15 

24. Town Geology. Charles Kings- 
ley. 4to 15 

25. Alfred the Great. Thos. Hughes. 

4to 20 

26. Outdoor Life in Europe. Rev. E. 

P. Thwing. 4to 20 

27. Calamities of Authors. I. D'ls- 

28. Salon of Madame Necker." ' Part I. 

4to 15 

29. Ethics of the Dust. JohnRuskin. 

4to 15 

30-31. Memories of My Exile. Louis 

Kossuth. 4to 40 

32. Mister Horn and His Friends. 

Illustrated. 4to 15 

33-&4. Orations of Demosthenes. 4to. 40 

35. Frondes Agrestes. John Rus- 

kin. 4to 15 

36. Joan of Arc. Alpnonse de La- 
martine. 4to 10 

37. Thoughts of M. Aurelius Anto- 
ninus. 4to 15 

38. Salon of Madame Necker. Part 
II. 4to 15 

39. The Hermits. Chas. Kingsley. 4to. 15 

40. John Ploughman's Pictures. C. 
H. Spurgeon. 4to 15 

41. Pulpit Table-Talk. Dean Ram- 
sey. 4to • 10 

42. Bible and Newspaper. C. H. 
Spurgeon. 4to 15 

43. Lacon. Rev. C. C. Colton. 4to. 20 



N». Frie«. 

44. Goldsmith's Citizen of the World. 

4to $0 20 

45. America Revisited. George Au- 

fustus Sala. 4to 20 
ife of C. H. Spurgeon. 8vo 20 

47. John Calvin. M. Guizot. 4to... 15 
48-49. Dickens' Christmas Books. 

Illustrated. 8vo sc 

50. Shairp's Culture and Religion. 8vo. 15 
51-52. Godet's Commentary on Luke. 
Ed. by Dr. John Hall. 8vo,2parts, 

both 2 00 

53. Diary of a Minister's Wife. Part 

I. 8vo 15 

54-57. Van Doren's Suggestive Com- 
mentary on Luke. New edition, 
enlarged. 8vo 3 00 

58. Diary of a Minister" s Wife. Part 

II. 8vo 15 

59. The Nutritive Cure. Dr. Robert 
Walter. 8vo 15 

60. Sartor Resartus. Thomas Car- 
lyle. 4to 25 

61-62. Lothair. Lord Beaconsfleld. 

8vo 50 

63. The Persian Queen and Other 
Pictures of Truth. Rev. E. P. 
Thwing. 8vo 10 

64. Salon of Madame Necker. Part 

III. 4to 15 

65-66. The Popular History ef Eng- 
lish Bible Translation. H.P.Co- 
nant. 8vo. Price both parts. .. 50 

67. Ingersoll Answered. Joseph Par- 
ker, D.D. 8vo 15 

68-69. Studies in Mark. D. C. 

Hughes. 8vo, in two parts 60 

70. Job's Comforters. A Religious 
Satire. Joseph Parker, D.D. (Lon- 
don.) 12mo 10 

71. The Revi ers' English. G.Wash- 
ington Moon, F.R.S.L. 12mo.. 29 

72. The Conversion of Children. Rev. 
Edward Payson Hammond. 12mo 30 

73. New Testament Helps. Rev. W. 

F. Crafts. 8vo TO 

74. Opium— England'* Coercive Poli- 
cy. Rev. Jno. Liggins. 8vo 10 

75. Blood of Jesus. Rev. Wm. A. 
Reid. With Introduction by E. 
P.Hammond. 12mo 10 

76. Lesson in the Closet for 1883. 
Charles F. Deems, DD. 12mo.. 20 

77-78. Heroes and Holidavs. Rev 

W. F. Crafts. 12mo. 2 pts., both 30 

79. Reminiscences of Rev. Lyman 

Beecher, D.D. 8vo 10 



FUNK & WAGNALLS, 10 and 12 Dey St., NEW YORK. 



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Neuralgia ; refreshes the nerves tired by worry, excitement, or excessive brain fatigue ; 
strengthens a failing memory, and gives renewed vigor in all diseases of Nervous Exhaus- 
tion or Debility. It is the only PREVENTIVE OF CONSUMPTION. 

It aids in the mental and bodily growth of children. Under its use the 
teeth come easier, the skin grows plumper and smoother ; the brain acquires 
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Physicians have used a Million Packages. It is not a secret remedy ; 
the formula is on every label* 

By Druggists or by Mail, $1. 

send for circular. F. CROSBY CO., 666 Sixth Avenue, N. Y. 



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